Life in Slow Motion
by Angel Monroe
Summary: What if there were bullets in the gun. A chapter piece exploring a 'what if' of Lucky's homicidal turn. LoVe pairing, but includes many characters. Spoilers 2.21 and 2.22 in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**Life in Slow Motion  
**by Angel Monroe

_Disclaimer: I gave my soul to God for the book I'm writing. I have nothing left to barter for Veronica Mars. In other words, unfortunately, I don't own it. _

_A/N: Okay, so I wasn't going to post this yet, but I really need the inspiration that only reviews can bring. I've written a few chapters ahead and I wasn't going to post until it was finished, but again, reviews make it easier. So this is another 'what if' piece, obviously longer than usual, and begins during 2.21 when Lucky goes all Columbine on Neptune High. Flashbacks are in italics, but you guys are smart enough to figure that out for yourselves. Leave a pixie stix review to fuel me if you like it. I'm not begging. It just might help keep this one off the eternally unfinished list._

In slow motion, she saw Wallace grab for the gun and Lucky get there first. She held her breath as Lucky cocked it and pointed at a frozen Wallace's chest. And she screamed with the rest of the student body when Lucky pulled the trigger and blood sprayed across the pavement behind her best friend's shoulder.

_Wallace sat on the bed next to her, silent and attentive. He didn't ask questions. It had never been their way. But this time there was no resentment in his self-restraint._

"_This is so not an 'I told you so,' but do you see why I kinda keep things to myself?"_

_The way he looked at her when he told her she should stay smothered any initial reserve she'd had. He wasn't judging her for taking that damned drink without knowing where it came from. He wasn't telling her how disgusted he was that she may have unknowingly dated and slept with her half-brother. He was just sitting there, telling her maybe she should stay until she was alright. He had her back. _

_She knew he always would._

Lucky cocked the gun again.

"Lucky!" she screamed, standing. She wasn't sure what compelled her out of her hiding place, shouting a madman's name, but Wallace's blood was beginning to pool and Lucky wasn't going to let him be saved without a substitution. "Lucky!"

He turned the gun towards her, blood in his eyes, and Gia trembled at her feet.

"You want a hostage?" she pushed out with only a slight tremor. "You wanna take this out on someone? Take me. I'm the one who ruined your plans for Gia and got you fired."

Something cleared in his eyes and a terrifying smile broke across his face. "Veronica Mars." Yeah, this was a brilliant plan.

She faked a trip as she stepped out from behind the table, taking the opportunity to grab her cell from where it had fallen and stuff it into her pocket. He was there before she could reach her tazer, and she shoved Gia under the table instead.

"Veronica Mars," he repeated slowly, rolling it around on his tongue. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her up into a hostage position, wrapping his free arm around her shoulders and pressing the gun into her temple.

She would have screamed, would have cried and wondered why, oh why, she had done something so stupid, but Jackie was on her cell phone and pressing the cloth of her jacket against Wallace's wound. He was going to be okay, and that was worth it.

That was the only coherent though she could muster as Lucky pulled her to the parking lot and shoved her into his truck.

* * *

Keith sat at his desk, looking over the file in front of him while the radio played softly in the background. Another wife convinced her husband was cheating. Turns out she was right, but that wasn't the half of it. The fact that he frequented a gay bar two towns over in full drag with random men on his arm was something Keith wasn't looking forward to telling Mrs. Zimmerman.

The break in his favorite song broke his concentration and the radio personality's voice rang clear. "Breaking news, folks. Looks like Neptune High just became a statistic—as if it wasn't already. At about 1:15 this afternoon, a Thomas "Lucky" Dohanic, opened fire in the Neptune High School lunch grounds, injuring one student and taking another hostage. Dohanic is reportedly a disgruntled former employee of the school, dismissed last week after a yet unreleased incident. There seem to be no casualties at this time and names of the injured and the hostage have not yet been released. Full story at three."

From somewhere inside his mind, Keith watched the Zimmerman file fall to the floor.

_When he'd gotten the call about a disturbance at the Kane estate, he knew it couldn't have been something small. They had their own people for the small clean-up jobs. _

_He would never forget the instant he saw Lilly Kane lying eyes-wide-open next to the pool. He wanted to cry for her. He wanted to cry for his daughter, too young to know such loss. But he was the sheriff and he had to remain professional, even though he'd known the girl for years, hosted slumber parties she'd attended and drove her home from school more times than he could count. Never mind that she was no more than a year older than his own daughter. Now she was just another victim, and that was how he had to see her to keep the tears back. _

_Veronica's gasp brought him back to himself. He turned to keep her from seeing, though he knew she already had. Still, he had to protect her from the pain. It was his purpose in life to keep her from pain._

_In the months that followed, he failed a hundred times over._

He was just about to pick up the phone to call his daughter when it rang.

"Veronica?" he asked, hoping her voice would reply.

"Keith." It was Lamb's voice instead, eerily civil, and his heart sank. "Keith, it's Don."

"Which was she?" he asked. If he kept talking, he might not break down. "Tell me she's at the hospital, Don, and that she's alright. Tell me he didn't take her."

Silence met him and Lamb didn't have to say a word. He mumbled an uncharacteristically genuine, "I'm sorry, Keith," and said something about making an excuse for him at the courthouse. It wasn't until he hung up that Keith put his head in his hands and wept, but only for a moment before he stood up, grabbed his GPS tracker, and headed for the car. If he was lucky, maybe Veronica had her cell on her.

* * *

Logan had decided not to go to school that morning. After watching his father lie so convincingly on the stand, he didn't think he could face the insignificance of high school calculus. So he'd holed himself up in the suite, staying away from the television, the radio, or anything else that might remind him that he would soon be testifying in his own father's murder trial.

When he pulled up to the courthouse, escorted by one of the deputies, he tried not to listen to the questions shot his way. He'd always hated reporters—slimy, bloodsucking leaches—but since the trial began his hate had turned into a deep-seeded loathing. He couldn't get off the freaking elevator without getting a flashbulb in his face.

He sat on the prosecution's side, ignoring the hurt glances his father was throwing his way. The cameras loved it.

"Your honor," the prosecutor said as soon as proceedings had started, "I'd like to move for a postponement on the grounds that one of my star witnesses was taken hostage this morning and has not yet been recovered."

Logan looked up sharply, choking on air as Lavoie stood to object.

"Your honor," he grandstanded, "this is just a ploy by the prosecution to draw attention away from—"

He was cut off by the prosecutor's incredulous laugh, and Logan looked around the courtroom. Veronica wasn't there, and neither was Keith. He stopped breathing.

"I'm sorry, your honor," the prosecutor said, composing himself. "This is in no way a laughing matter, but honestly, I couldn't have planned this if I wanted to. You must have seen it or heard about it on the afternoon news: a student taken hostage at Neptune High School after an armed man opened fire."

A buzz started in Logan's ear and he thought he might pass out.

_She wiped the blood from his face with a warm washcloth, cradling his head against the arm of the couch. Her eyes were so sad, so loving, that it almost made up for the fact that she'd accused him of murder. Of course, the fact that his father had almost killed her that night made up the difference, and he was just glad she could look him in the eyes. _

_He groaned and she made a soft shushing noise, running a hand over his brow. Right then he thought he might love her, and he wished he could say it. But part of him knew that she would pull away and he didn't have the emotional stability to handle that kind of disappointment. _

"This hostage was your witness?" the judge asked, snapping him back to the present.

"Veronica Mars. Her father, another key witness, is out looking for her. Without these testimonies, I don't think it would be possible to weigh this trial fairly."

The judge nodded. "Do you have any other witnesses?"

The prosecutor turned just in time to see Logan's back as he disappeared out the door.

"Um, also looking, your honor."

The judge nodded again. "Postponement granted. Trial date will be set pending the outcome of recent events."

He knocked his gavel and the whole courtroom began to buzz.


	2. Chapter 2

The sound of sirens had long since faded in the distance, Lucky having lost the Neptune High rent-a-cop with a few sharp turns and moderate traffic. Given their relationship, she wasn't expecting cavalry in the form of the sheriff's department. Now she was thankful for her seatbelt as they sailed over bumpy and uneven roads. Nope, this wasn't the highway.

She didn't know how long they'd been driving or in what direction. For all she knew, he'd been serious about jumping the state canyon. Didn't matter, though, because she wouldn't see it coming anyway. He'd grabbed a shirt from the floor and fashioned it into a blindfold. The smell of his sweat and aftershave on it almost choked her, but she didn't dare try to adjust it. He hadn't tied her hands, and for that she was thankful, but she knew he hadn't put down his gun. Her hand was in her pocket, trying to feel her way over the buttons of her cell phone, and any unnecessary attention could prove fatal.

"Where are you taking me," she asked finally, trying to muffle the sounds of the cell as she hit what she hoped was speed-dial 2, her father.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Veronica," his teasing voice replied. "Maybe you should take a lesson."

"What happened to you, Lucky?" she couldn't help but wonder aloud. "You didn't used to be like this." Though, of course, she didn't know if it was true. She just assumed that a man didn't come psychotic straight from the womb.

"Like what?" he asked, but she could hear amusement in his voice. She wasn't sure if that should be comforting.

"What do you think?" She pulled the phone a little ways out of her pocket so the listener could hear better. "You tried to do I-don't-know-what to Gia, you would have killed my friend, and you kidnapped me at gunpoint. Does that sound like something a sane person would do?" Probably not the best way to placate an armed man, but she really wanted to know. There had to be more to this than a fixation on the Mayor's space-case daughter.

His voice when he spoke was quiet, childlike, and it made her shiver. "Sanity wasn't made for lost little boys."

* * *

When Logan saw Veronica's number on his caller id, for a second he thought it was all a misunderstanding. She was fine, safe, at home sick with the flu or something. He'd just misheard the prosecutor say that some guy had taken her hostage at gunpoint.

But when she didn't return his greeting and only muffled conversation came through, his heart jumped out the window. It was Agent Ben all over again, only this time the man in the car with her really was dangerous.

"_Curiosity killed the cat, Veronica,"_ he heard a familiar voice say. _"Maybe you should take a lesson." _He just about crashed his car.

Pulling into the nearest gas station, he jumped out of the car and ran inside. "Payphone?" he demanded, and the clerk pointed him towards the back. When it began to ring, he reluctantly took his ear from his cell phone.

"Keith Mars," the man answered.

"Mr. Mars," he replied shakily, putting a hand against the wall in front of him for support. "It's Logan Echolls. I have Veronica on my cell phone and I don't know what to do."

* * *

Keith dropped his head against the steering wheel for the second and a half he could afford without crashing. Veronica was alive and talking. He couldn't have asked for better news at that point.

"Lucky's got her and I'm listening to their conversation, but it's not telling me much," Logan continued, and he could hear the boy's fear clearer than his own.

"Where are you?" he asked, looking down at the GPS tracker. He was following the signal south, taking the highway in hopes of making up their head start. If he was right, and he probably was, Lucky was headed to Mexico. "I need to get my hands on that cell phone."

"I was on my way to your place. I'm at the Marathon just down the road."

"Well I'm about thirty-five minutes south of you, tracking her phone." Keith sighed, looking at the constantly moving dot on the screen. "I can't afford to go back, but maybe you can help from there."

* * *

"Anything," Logan breathed. "Just tell me what you want me to do."

"I need you to get to the office and be my eyes and ears from there. There's a loose board on the window ledge to the left of the door. You'll find a key underneath."

He chuckled. Sounded like Veronica.

"_Dag nabbit!" He looked up at her oh-so-ladylike expletive as she rifled through her purse. "I can't seem to find my keys. Do you think I left them at your place?"_

"_It's possible," he smiled, caught in a memory. "In fact, I'm betting they're imbedded somewhere deep in the couch." _

_She smiled at that, too, and moved towards the porch railing. She reached up on her tiptoes and grasped the bottom of a hanging plant, twisting until the water drop-dish came off. Raising a mischievous eyebrow, she tipped it forward to show him the tiny screwdriver taped inside. At his curious look, she walked to her bedroom window and began unscrewing the screen. _

_By the time they broke up, he'd perfected the art of sneaking in her window at night. _

"I'll be there in five minutes," he replied thickly, blinking his eyes to clear the memory away. "I'll call you as soon as I get in the door."

* * *

Veronica had tried to keep Lucky talking, but the man was being intentionally evasive. Not that she hadn't expected it, but desperation was pushing her mind to new tracts of imagination and she didn't like what she found there. Her projected scenarios had always been too vivid.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked finally, knowing that he probably wouldn't answer. She still had to ask.

His silence was as foreboding as expected.

"Well then, what are you going to do yourself? You know that you can't get over the border with me all blindfolded and uncooperative, and my dad will find me sooner or later, wherever you go. That's kinda what private eyes do."

"You know, you talk way too much for a hostage." It wasn't a warning, just a statement.

And Veronica laughed. "Hey, at least you didn't take Gia. You would have shot your own brains out half an hour ago."

He laughed at that, but it wasn't an amused laughter. It was a scared one. Something about Gia made him trip. Or maybe it wasn't Gia; maybe it was Woody.

Keith had told her a little about his conversation with Lucky in lockup. That Goodman wasn't all that people thought he was. She herself had heard Lucky yell, "He deserved it!" Yeah, whatever was going on with Lucky had everything to do with Woody. If she could find out, maybe she'd have something to work with.

"I'm going to stop at a gas station now," he almost whispered as she felt the car slow. "I'm going to take the blindfold off, and you're going to close your eyes and pretend to be sleeping, understand? If I hear so much as a whisper, see your lips so much as move, not even your father will find you."

The sudden menacing in his voice was startling after his previous calm, and her breath hitched to the point of hyperventilation when she felt the butt of his gun in her side. "I understand," she breathed out, closing her eyes tightly as he took his shirt from over her head.

She leaned her forehead against the warm window of the passenger door and fought the urge to open her eyes. Blindness was helplessness, and in her world, nothing was worse. As she heard the door open but not close, she knew he was watching her, waiting for her to make some kind of move. There were no other sounds than the radio playing outside and Lucky's off-key voice singing along to it. She doubted there were any other cars there. Yelling would do no good.

But to pay, he would either need to use a credit card or go inside. Either way, there would be a record of him.

When his singing stopped and she heard a distant bell, she figured he chose option number two. Smart man. Credit cards were easier to track than surveillance tapes. But he was probably still watching. She didn't have much time.

"I'm at a gas station," she said as clearly as possible, shifting her head so her arm was blocking her mouth. "I can't see where we're going, but we've been driving what seems like rundown back roads for a while now. I don't think there's anyone else around right now." Her voice began to shake…just a little. "So far Lucky hasn't hurt me, but he has a gun and I'm scared. Please come find me."

That was all she could get before she heard the bell again and she clamped her lips together.

* * *

"She's not hurt, Keith. She said they're stopped at a gas station on some back roads somewhere," Logan sighed as he fell back into Keith's desk chair. He'd probably broken about six laws—including the laws of physics—to get there, the cell phone plastered to his ear the whole way. All he'd wanted was a clue, any clue, as to where she was. And when he heard her speak, so soft and scared after such a threat, it just about broke him. "That's all she could say. I heard the car door shut so I think they're about to leave again."

"I can work with that," Keith breathed into the phone, and Logan could hear exhaustion in his voice. "I'm driving the highway in their direction. Should give me a little time to catch up."

Suddenly, something on his cell caught his attention.

"What is that?" Lucky's voice came suddenly, sharper than he'd heard it before, and he held his breath.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: So, you guys seem to like this little project. I'm thrilled. And your pixie stix reviews are going straight to the inspiration bank, so thanks for that. _

"What is what?" Veronica asked, her body freezing at the edge in his voice. Her blindfold was back in place and the world was once again an inky black hole.

She felt his hand on her leg and gasped, fighting the urge to tremble or flail. It would do her no good. He had a gun and all the control that went with it. Even if the gas station attendant saw them, ten-to-one he wouldn't do a damned thing anyway.

But then, she was used to that.

"_Look at this. She cries." He sneered the words, and part of her was surprised. Part of her wasn't._

_If it were any other day, she would have tried to hide it. If she weren't tired and scared and completely out of her mind, she would have pulled on her best poker face and made him eat his words, but she'd been raped, and just then she couldn't make herself act okay._

"_I'll tell you what Veronica Mars, why don't you go see the wizard. Ask for a little back bone."_

_It was right then and there she decided that she'd never show her weakness again. _

But weak she was. Helpless. She knew he could rape her, kill her, or sell her to the Mexican mafia as an indentured whore; as long as he held a gun to her head, "no" just wouldn't cut it.

And then his hand moved up the outside of her thigh and she knew exactly what he was reaching for. It gave her absolutely no comfort.

Her phone.

"What is this?" he demanded, and she jerked back when he was closer than she'd thought. "Who are you talking to? Who am I talking to?" she assumed he asked into the phone. Then a harsh wind blew in her face and she imagined she could hear the distant crack.

So much for her phone.

* * *

Back at Mars Investigations, Logan stared at his cell phone, completely bewildered. The loss of her voice, muffled and afraid as it had been, was excruciating. That very second, Lucky could be doing anything to her. He could be killing her. Logan would never know, and for a moment he thought he was having a genuine heart attack.

"He found the phone, Keith. The line's dead," he whispered breathlessly into the landline before he dropped the receiver and began to cry.

* * *

Keith glanced from the road down to the little blinking dot on the GPS. One moment it was there, and then it wasn't. He glanced back once, twice, and then three more times before he threw the tracker into the back seat. On the other end of the cell phone, he heard Logan's broken voice.

"He found the phone, Keith. The line's dead."

Then a dial tone filled the line and he dropped that too. An eerie silence filled the car as he headed down the highway and hoped they didn't change course.

Unwilling to fly blindly, he picked the phone up again. "Don, it's Keith. You guys have gotten into Lucky's apartment, right? What have you got?"

* * *

He tied her hands behind her back. He put a gag in her mouth. He turned up the radio to migraine volume to drown out whatever demons were whispering in his ears, but he didn't kill her. She had no idea why he hadn't killed her.

So she sat as far from him as she could—blind, mute, and unable to move, just hoping they weren't headed to the edge of any cliffs. She didn't know how long it had been; time was measured by how many songs Lucky had butchered. Eight songs had to be about 20 minutes, right? Maybe a little more.

She wondered where her father was. What had happened after her phone took a flying leap? He was probably going as crazy as she was.

She remembered after her near-death experience, compliments of Aaron Echolls and a tank of gasoline, he hadn't let her out of the house alone for two weeks. Even then, he'd checked up on her constantly until she'd settled into a nice, safe job and a nice, safe boyfriend (in the form of Duncan). He'd never thought Logan was safe.

That thought left her wondering where Logan was, how he was taking her disappearance. After the AlternaProm she knew that he cared, that there was something still between them, but the _what_ and the _how_ and the _how much_ were all gray and fuzzy areas safest left uncharted. The last she'd seen of him, he'd been stoic and pokerfaced in the courtroom. Before that, he'd been half-naked with a leggy, trailer-trash brunette wrapped around him. But she didn't want to think of that. If she never saw Logan again, she wanted her last thoughts of him to be of better times.

_She walked out of Agent Ben's motel room, her mind abuzz with conflicting emotion. Today she had been kidnapped by the good guy, rescued by the bad guy, petitioned for help by her kidnapper, and told that Neptune's own Kaczynski wanted to make her his bedroom buddy. Something like that could really screw with a girl's head. _

_And there he was, waiting against the wall right where he said he'd be. No matter what had happened between them in the past year and a half, he'd come running when he'd thought she was in trouble—when she'd thought she was in trouble. And now here he was, asking if she was okay and looking at her with such concern that her stomach flipped. Twice._

_She would never know what possessed her to reach up and kiss him. No event in their entire history save his latest heroics would precipitate such an action, and as soon as she saw the confusion in his eyes, she knew he was thinking the same. It was a mistake, an impulse, and nothing more. _

_But then he pulled her back and the world stopped for one heartbreakingly perfect kiss. It screamed fire and passion and so many things she hadn't felt in so long, and for once she didn't see Duncan's face when she closed her eyes. Inexplicably, all she could feel were his hands around her waist, pulling her closer and melding them together. That was all she wanted because for weeks he hadn't been the psychotic jackass she had dubbed him earlier that year. He was simply Logan, a once friend and now indefinable man who seemed to turn her inside-out. _

_Yeah, this afternoon was definitely screwing with her head._

She leaned her forehead against the window, letting the memory wash over her. Every time she remembered that kiss, her stomach bottomed out and she breathed an involuntary gasp. Even the recollection was that potent, and she thought that if she died right there, that memory of him would be enough. She just hoped it would be enough for him, too.

* * *

He sat at the Mars' computer, pulling up file after file and window after window, hoping to find something pertinent. There was nothing there that Keith didn't know. Description of suspect. Description of vehicle. Prescriptions for sleeping pills and antidepressants (like half the citizens of Neptune). No close-living relatives, his parents having moved to Connecticut two years past. No known friends outside those teenagers for which he sporadically bought beer. No one that would hide him, certainly, and he didn't have the money to get too far. He'd closed out all his accounts (a sobering thought in itself), but that was barely over two grand. Nothing in the files would jump out and say, "This is where I am! This is where I'm going!" Damned uncooperative files.

Stupid as it seemed, he knew that what they really needed was Veronica. She was always good at getting to the root of things. She knew how to lie, cheat, and steal her way to answers. His father wasn't as talented an actor as she was when she wanted something.

_She picked up the phone and he could have sworn he saw honey dripping from those lips. "Hi, I'm calling from Todd Russell's office_ _at CAA. He read your script, 'Escaping Your Past' and he went nuts over it. Have you sold it yet? Really? Who's producing it?" _

_He couldn't help but grin. There seemed to be nothing this girl couldn't do with that mind and that smile. God, he loved her smile. That, in itself, was starting to scare him. He was beginning to remember what it was like to think about her without anger, to care about her even. To want to be around her. _

"_Is that G-o-r-a-n? Great. I'm sure he'll want to speak with him. Maybe we can get you guys a deal. Okay, we'll be in touch. Thanks. Bye." Hanging up the phone, she began to type, and he moved to stand behind her. "Dylan Goran."_

"_Is there really an agent named Todd Russell at CAA?" It was a new experience, not blaming Veronica Mars for everything and anything he could. Feeling that burn low in his stomach every time he saw her was something completely unexpected, and he was pretty sure he liked it. _

"_There could be, maybe." He laughed. Yup, he could definitely get used to it._

He picked up the phone and dialed Keith's number again. "What can I do?" he asked before the man could even finish his greeting. "I'm finding jack here. Just tell me what to look for."

* * *

"You know, there is something you can do," Keith replied, flipping on his blinker to change lanes. "Print out a picture of Lucky and the truck and fax it to all of the border crossings in California and Arizona. The numbers are in a file in the bottom drawer. He may have changed course when he found the cell phone; I don't want to risk him heading east and slipping by unnoticed. Between Lamb and me, we're pretty connected with border control. If Lucky tries to cross, we'll get him."

He heard the boy sigh raggedly, and a scuffle on the line told him he was already working on it. "Alright. I can do that. Anything else?"

"Start faxing or calling motels along the major highways in California and Arizona. Anything south of Route 10. He's not likely to get anything big. Probably some no-tell motel a little ways off the road. Give them Lucky's name and his truck model and plates. It's a long shot, but if he doesn't cross the border, he's going to have to take her somewhere."

He didn't really want to think of what might happen to his little girl in a no-tell motel. She'd been through enough in the past year to last her two lifetimes.

_He watched as the flames slithered across the patio towards a lot of junk that shouldn't have been in a backyard. The fire itself didn't concern him as much as the fact that Aaron had set it. There had to be a reason he'd set it. _

_Aaron's half-groan, half-laugh chilled him to the bone. "She's in the fridge, Keith. You might want to check up on her."_

_It took a split second for every moment he'd ever spent with her to flash through his mind—Lianne telling him she was pregnant, watching her be born, holding her, lighting candles on her birthday cakes, holding her when she cried, sending her off to school, putting her on his shoulders, meeting her first date, changing her diapers, combing her hair, handing her Christmas ornaments, talking over dinner, reading her bedtime stories…they all washed over him in a blur of motion, but he recognized every moment, every picture, every smile. _

_People always hear about amazing feats performed by adrenaline-pumped parents when their children were in danger. He found out, then and there, adrenaline had nothing to do with it. It was love. Love made him step through that fire and roll the fridge open. As brave and heroic as he had always liked to think himself, if it hadn't been his little girl he probably wouldn't have done it. He would have wasted precious seconds thinking about it. But it was Veronica and he didn't think about the danger until he was coughing and she was saying over and over that she loved him._

"I'll use the landline," Logan replied, out of breath like he was already moving. "Call my cell if you need anything else or if you have news. Anything at all, I'll keep it open."

"Thanks Logan." He hung up and put down the phone, pulling open the map on the passenger seat. If he kept heading south, he'd hit the border and cross that escape route off the list. Lamb was looking into the contents of Lucky's apartment. Keith had already called every contact he could think of in the area, from police departments to motel managers to bank tellers to rest stop waitresses. Lucky's credit cards were already cancelled, Veronica's on notice, and if Logan did his job the border would be ready.

Something would turn up. It always did. He just had to keep telling himself that.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Yeah, so you guys have probably been wondering where your update was this last week. I'll tell you. It was on my computer. And my computer was off the internet. For seven freaking days. I was about ready to kill the IT people. I settled for just being a pain in their collective ass until they got it up and running. Which they did, and it'll be off again tonight, so I'm getting this up now. So here it is. Enjoy. _

Logan looked up from the phone pad when he heard a knock at the door. "Come in!" he called, not even bothering to consider that it wasn't his place to invite.

Especially when the visitor was about the last person he expected.

"Weevil?"

"Any news on V?" the Latino man asked him, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. Nervously, Logan would go so far as to say.

"Nothing yet," he replied, leaving his signature sarcasm at home where it belonged. They were all on edge as it was.

He didn't like the guy; that much he would admit to anyone in the world. The two had had more than their share of undesired interaction, most of which ended with blood on the pavement between them. But he also knew that one of those times was when Weevil, in an unprecedented show of decency, had revenged Veronica's car with a bloody nose and a bruised jaw. He'd helped her out numerous times over the past couple years, and she certainly wasn't paying him. The man had even done him a good turn or two. From what he understood, there was a long history of owed favors between the two of them, and no one really kept count. Weevil seemed to have a soft spot for everyone's favorite pint-sized private eye.

"What can I do?"

Logan was pretty sure he wasn't the phone duty type of guy.

"Last time anyone knew, they were headed south on back roads along 5 towards the border, but Keith thinks they'd probably head east instead of crossing into TJ. Lucky's driving a red pickup, California plate…" He looked down at the screen, "…GVT 323. I'm calling motels along the highways. Do with that information what you wish."

Weevil simply bowed his head, nodded a few times, and headed out the door. A few moments later, he heard Weevil's car and about twelve bikes start up.

He smiled lightly, wondering if Veronica knew how many friends she really had.

* * *

The first image Wallace saw after an eternity of the back of his eyelids was a sterile blue-grey wall, cheered halfheartedly by a tiny television and an imitation Norman Rockwell. It seemed strange that he recognized the picture, having seen a grand total of three Rockwell paintings in his life. But the first question he asked himself was why it was in his room. And when did he get his own TV? And who painted.

It was the starchy smell that snapped him out of it. The hospital smell that seemed to be the same no matter which one. Bleach and baby oil. For a moment he didn't know why he was there, and then the pain in his shoulder reminded him as soon as he tried to move.

"Wallace, baby, relax." He turned and looked into his mother's eyes, so red-rimmed and concerned.

Soon he began to remember and the pain burned through him like an aftershock. He'd been shot. Holy shit, he'd been shot! He would have been shot again, probably killed, if it wasn't for…

"Veronica!" He sprang up again and then fell back against a wave of nausea. "Where is she?" he grunted through the pain. Alicia didn't answer and he felt like he might vomit. "She's okay, right? Tell me she's okay."

His mother's eyes were sad, pitying. "The man that shot you," she said softly, like saying the words would jinx him somehow, "he took her. Keith is out trying to find her." Then with more confidence, "Everyone is out looking for her. She's going to be fine."

He couldn't make himself look her in the eyes because he couldn't stand to see what she was thinking and doubt her placations. Was it wrong for him to want to believe it? Veronica had done what she had for him. He'd heard her faintly over the pounding in his ears and Jackie's hiccupping sobs. Lucky had been about to shoot again when Veronica had screamed his name. There was only one possible motive for that.

It was funny—with all the favors she'd asked of him, he was still the one who owed her his life. But that was just the kind of person she was. He'd known it the first time he'd seen her.

"_All right, say cheese. Smile." The flash in his face was only a minor irritation. He'd been standing up on that damned flagpole since six that morning. When the first students had arrived, he'd been embarrassed. When more students had come, gathering around him like they were watching a freaking three-ring circus act, he'd been mortified. Now, buck-naked, immobile, and itching in all the wrong places, he didn't think hell would feel worse. The picture (which, he mused, would likely turn up in the yearbook) just added subtly to the excruciation. _

"_Move," a hard, feminine voice commanded, and he looked down to see a short, petite blond girl holding a knife to the jackass with the camera. If he were anywhere else, he would have laughed as the guy twice her size hightailed it out of there. "You're new here, huh," she commented as began to saw the tape on his wrist. "Welcome to Neptune High."_

_In that moment, he silently pledged eternal gratitude to the girl he'd later learn was Veronica Mars. _

Looking up at Alicia finally, he saw exactly what he'd expected and his stomach dropped. He let her take his hand as he stared out the window at what he deemed to be a deceptively beautiful day. He didn't ask how he could help the search. For once, lying hurt and immobile in that bed, there were no favors he could do for Veronica Mars.

* * *

Keith's eyes flitted across the highway and he wondered what exactly he was looking for. They already knew Lucky wasn't taking the main roads. He wouldn't find his daughter among the faces in the passenger windows flying past. But he couldn't help but look. It was something to keep him sane.

When the sound of the annoying ice cream truck tune began warbling from his phone, he knew it could only be one person…

"Don, what do you have for me?"

"We got into Lucky's e-mail account, and it seems Mr. Dohanic sent several e-mails to Woody Goodman in the past couple months. He deleted all the attachment files, but I think if we can get onto Woody's computer, he might still have them."

It made sense. While they were in that holding cell, Lucky had hinted at his fixation with Goodman. Whatever he'd been planning for Gia seemed to have been a way to get to her father. And whatever was in those e-mails was likely to tell them why.

"Get a warrant," he said. Lamb made a very characteristic scoffing noise on the other end, as if to say, _I'm not that stupid, Keith_, and he continued, "Get a warrant and go when it's just Gia. Tell her that Lucky sent her father _an_ e-mail just before he snapped and that it would be great if you could just see if there's anything pertinent. She'll buy it. Woody might get defensive and do something stupid if he's there."

"He's got a press conference in ten minutes. I'll do it then. In the mean time, I have a couple people watching him. After the incident with his daughter, he said he'd had barely any contact with Lucky since Lucky was a batboy. There's something off about all this."

Keith couldn't agree more. Whatever this obsession Lucky had with Goodman, it went way past a simple case of disgruntled ex-employee. Everything about it was way too personal. "You know, Don, I never thought I'd say this but I think you're right."

* * *

Somehow, pushed to the brink of stress and exhaustion, she fell asleep against the passenger door. Too much had happened and she needed the respite of utter ignorance to soothe her nerves.

Of course, ignorance and bliss didn't always go hand in hand. The dreams she could have done without.

_Wallace looked up at her from the pavement, his eyes unblinking and his arms thrown out on either side. It was a position she had come to call the Lilly pose, and she couldn't turn away. A wet stain began in the middle of his chest and crept its way out. Her vision began to waver and fade, and the scene slipped into…_

_Her living room in Neptune. Logan stood in front of her, staring at her with betrayal in his eyes. "Fun? Fun!" The lamp next to him shattered against the wall. "My mom is dead! My girlfriend is dead! My dad is a murderer! And the only person I still care about is dumping me. You think I'm having fun?" She let out a sob, hating herself for what the next months would do to him. Her eyes filled with tears, and her vision began to swim into…_

_The look in Keith's eyes when he confronted her about Duncan and little Lilly. She had lied to him so many times over the past couple years that it was almost their norm, but not like this. Not about the pivotal, life-changing things. He'd stuck his neck out for her, and she'd been lying straight to his face. In his eyes, she saw something click, change, and she wished on every star she could name that she could change it back. In that one moment, if only then, she wasn't his little girl anymore. "It's not just your life you're gambling with, Veronica," he choked and her heart broke. "I would not survive without you." She blinked hard and opened her eyes to…_

_The dark inside of a refrigerator. She couldn't see anything, but the air smelled of smoke and her skin felt like it was burning. She knew exactly where she was. Suddenly the fridge tilted dangerous. _

"_Dad!" she screamed, trying to beat against the top. Something held her hands. "Dad!"_

"_Mars, chill." A voice that didn't fit whispered in her ear. "Come on, Mars, it's just a flat. Chill."_

_The fridge tipped again, then stilled. She began to choke and cough, the air heavy with aftershave, and she knew she was going to die. _

"_Damnit, Mars, snap out of it!"_

A sharp pain on her cheek forced her awake, gasping for breath, and she almost panicked when she still couldn't see anything. Her arms wouldn't cooperate and there was something in her mouth.

"It's about damned time." Lucky's voice came from her right and it surprised the hell out of her. The car was stopped. The passenger door was open. And her cheek was throbbing.

_He hit me_, she realized belatedly, rotating her stiff neck. _The bastard hit me_. But it was almost worth it to get out of the dream. The remnants of it left her with sweat on her brow and tears in her eyes. She wouldn't let them fall, though. No weakness.

"Come on, we blew a tire," he said, and she felt herself being dragged ungracefully out of her seat. The blindfold was ripped from her face, and the mid-afternoon sun was a blinding shock after such a void. "We're going to have to start walking. The blindfold and everything would be a bit conspicuous. But don't you dare try anything. I still have my gun." He pulled it out of his waistband to show her, as if she needed the proof.

Her hands were cut loose and the gag pulled from her mouth, and all she could do was thank God for tire wear. Her muscles ached and her throat was dry and cottony. When she looked around, they seemed to be on the side of a country road. No one else was around, and the chance of being spotted by a cop was slim to none. Yeah, this seemed like a great place to be stranded. Maybe that little prayer was ill-timed.


	5. Chapter 5

Logan had been on the phone for an hour now, and he'd about gotten his routine down. For every motel under three stars on the internet list he'd pulled up, he called, asked for the manager, gave him the information, and moved on. It was to the point where each call lasted about three minutes, give or take an uncooperative receptionist.

Keith had called twenty minutes back with an update of absolutely nothing. None of his contacts had hit anything yet and Lucky hadn't hit the border. Logan knew it was more of a courtesy call than anything, something to keep him sane while he imagined every horrible scenario possible.

When the call waiting beeped during one of his calls, he hesitated to answer it. Keith had his cell number. Anyone else could wait. But when the call didn't drop by the time he finished with the motel, he clicked over out of sheer curiosity.

"Mars Investigation. We're too busy," he answered, reasonably sure Keith would forgive him.

"Not for this," Weevil's voice met him, and suddenly he was all ears. "One of my boys found Lucky's truck. He ain't in it." Then, belatedly, "And neither is she."

"Tell me where it is. I'll get Keith over there to check it out."

Keith was right; they were heading east. But the red pickup was a dead end. All those motel phone calls—an hour's waste. At least maybe the name would hit somewhere. It was all he could hope at that point.

---

Keith was almost to San Diego, heading south on 5 towards the border and keeping an open eye and an open mind. Just waiting for something to jump out at him. The longer it was without word, the more anxious he got. But if Lamb could get into Woody's e-mails, maybe they could find something.

It was strange, trusting Lamb and the Neptune authorities with anything more than a parking ticket. They'd spent so much time fighting each other, and here he was, eliciting their help in anything they could offer. He knew all too well that terrified fathers could afford no pride.

"Keith Mars," he answered mechanically when his phone rang.

"Keith, it's Logan. I've got good news and bad news."

He sighed, his patience worn paper-thin. "Logan, do you know how unsafe the 'good news, bad news' game is to a man who's looking for his kidnapped daughter?"

"Trust me, sir. If Veronica herself were the bad news, there would be no good news," the boy's uncouth wit returned to him for a moment before his voice deadened again. "So, good news is that one of the PCHers found Lucky's truck. It was on the side of a back road on the outskirts of San Marco off 78. Flat tire."

"Bad news?"

"Lucky and Veronica aren't there. If you're thinking what I'm thinking, they probably either got picked up hitchhiking or walked to the nearest gas station and boosted a car."

"Which means the police are running blind out there." He shook his head, not caring that Logan couldn't see it. "I'm almost to 52, but I'll be there in half an hour. If you talk to Weevil again, tell him and his boys not to touch the truck."

"Will do."

"Thanks Logan." And he meant it. He'd never been Logan's biggest fan. The kid had caused Veronica more heartache than he ever wanted to see. But he'd been doing everything he could to bring her home safely. Keith had to suppose that made him a one of the good guys.

"Anything for Veronica," the boy replied, confirming what he already suspected. If there wasn't love there, he didn't know what love was.

---

She heard the motorcycle before she saw anything. It wasn't the sound of a crotch-rocket or anything like that. It wasn't what men in mid-life crises bought to regain their youths. It was a hardcore bike, big and loud and rough. She'd heard the sound of it more than a few times over the two years she'd been sporadically on the PCHers' good side.

_She watched stiffly as Logan smashed the hell out of her second headlight with a crowbar, and though she was expecting it she flinched anyway. It was an unusual display for him—he was usually so much more verbal than physical when it came to their sparring—but today she could tell he was really mad. Not just mad, livid. _

"_Nope. You're usually so good at pop quizzes." His lips were smiling, taunting, but his eyes were anything but. His eyes were on fire. "No, the correct answer is my car. That's right. My Daddy took my T-Bird away. And you know what I won't be having?" He came to stand right in front of her, the crowbar resting on the back of his neck, and for a fleeting, illogical second, she thought he could be angry enough to hurt her. "Fun, fun, fun."_

_Neither of them heard the motorcycles pull up, but soon enough Weevil was dismounting and she was hoping he wasn't there to join the hate parade. She was just about out of wit today._

"_What do we have here? Vandalism? No, no, no. Only vandalism that happens in this town goes through me." She smothered a relieved sigh, both for Weevil's apparent protection and the fact that Logan was no longer staring at her. _

_After the pleasantries were exchanged, Josh Jenkin's mother's car was thoroughly dented, and Logan was driving away with a bloody nose, Veronica began to breathe again. _

"_So that, uh, surveillance tape just… poof?" Weevil asked, and for once she was grateful for him. _

"_That's fortunate." _

_He probably hadn't saved her life—she really did know Logan wouldn't hurt her—but he had been there. He'd helped her out when he hadn't needed to. Maybe there was more to Weevil Navarro than a rap sheet after all._

_A week later, he threatened her for looking at his bike. Days after that, he hugged her for getting him out of jail. She guessed the roulette wheel that made up their tentative friendship had fairly even odds._

"Get down," Lucky hissed and shoved her hard down the steep embankment. The ground was bruising, the grass thin and bristly, and she cursed him and her skinned elbows. He jumped down and pulled her behind a bush as the rumbles grew louder.

A familiar lime green Impala, trailed by three bikes, drove by in the opposite direction and Veronica wanted so much to scream to them. She wanted to wave her hands and make him see her, but he wouldn't hear over the bikes and he was already fading into the distance.

But it gave her hope. There were people out there looking for her. It wasn't just her dad or, God help her, Lamb and his henchmen. She knew that she'd be found sooner or later.

She just hoped it was sooner.

"Come on," Lucky took her roughly by the arm and dragged her up the hill. "We're burning daylight. There's got to be something up this road somewhere."

---

After sitting too long in that desk chair, Logan finally gave in and took Backup for a quick run. He wasn't finding anything new anyway. But he took his cell with him in case Keith called.

When he came back, someone was sitting at the computer: a pretty girl with red-streaked brown hair. He couldn't remember her name, but he'd seen her around with Beaver. She was Veronica's friend. Good with computers. He didn't bother asking how she got in.

She didn't look away from the screen when she spoke. "You know, you guys should have called me earlier. You're not going to find anything using regular search channels."

"I was just calling motels along the highways," he answered wearily, running a hand through his hair. "Not much hacker prowess needed for that."

"Yes, but can you create a mass e-mail that'll be sent to every hotel, motel, gas station, bus station, and train station in California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada?"

He blinked, stunned. "Um, no. Can you?"

"Give me fifteen minutes."

A little taken aback, he stumbled over words. "I'm sorry, what was your name?"

She looked up at him curiously and then back at the computer screen. "Mac. And you're Logan. Now that we have that cleared up, is there anything else I can help with or are you going to stand there looking flabbergasted? Veronica is still out there."

That snapped him out of it. "Yeah, I know. You think you can stay here and play the research angle while I join the search?"

"It's what I do best," she saluted. Logan took down her cell number before he grabbed his jacket and headed out.

He dialed Keith's number as he fastened his seat belt. "Keith, it's me. Veronica's friend Mac is taking over the office stuff. I don't know if you know her. She's, like, a computer prodigy or something."

"We've met," the man replied.

"Yeah, well, I'm heading out there. Keep me up to date on the what's, where's, and how's, alright?"

"Of course. But Logan, whatever happens, you call me before you do anything. This isn't the time for rash and stupid moves."

"Gotcha."

"Alright. I should be at Lucky's truck pretty soon. I'll call you if I find anything."

Logan hung up and threw the phone on the passenger seat. The car was already three blocks from the office. In theory, it would take a little over an hour to get to San Marcos. He bet he could do it in half that time.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: So this is where we're starting to get more into the 2.22 spoilers, so be warned. School just started up again, so it might be a little longer between chaps. Sorry about that. School before fun, unfortunately. Enjoy. _

"You're never going to believe this, Keith."

Lamb's voice was scared and excited and so many other things on the other end, and Keith sat up a little straighter in his seat. "Spill."

"Get this headline," he said, pausing for dramatic effect in typical Lamb fashion. "E-mail recording reveals Mayor Goodman child molester."

He almost choked. "Are you sure, Lamb? What's this about a recording?"

"There was an e-mail—not from any of Dohanic's known accounts, but we're checking into that—with two boys talking about Goodman being a pervert and how some of the Sharks must have known. With Dohanic having been a batboy, I think we can all assume what his issue with Goodman is."

The case's level of unnerving dysfunction jumped about ten notches. "Where's Woody now?"

"We picked him up when he came home. He's in a holding cell but we can't keep him more than 24 hours without something more substantial. You know the drill."

"Yeah," he sighed, "I know the drill. But at least it keeps him from taking that private plane to South America."

"That's the idea. What we need is the identity of the boys on the tape. One voice seems to have been edited out, but with two witnesses, we'd have enough to charge."

Keith smiled. Sometimes it was good to have friends. "You know, Don, I think I know who can help you with that. She's at the office right now. Name's Mac…"

---

She sat at her computer, the click click click of her fingers flying over the keys her only companion. She wasn't going to panic. She couldn't panic. In situations like these, she had to keep her cool. Veronica would keep her cool. She hoped Veronica was still keeping her cool, wherever she was.

"Missing girl," she read aloud, trying for the life of her to think of what else to say. "Missing friend."

She'd always been good at the computer stuff, and she knew how to market. Give her the domain space, and she could sell porcupine leg warmers. But how was that going to help her find Veronica?

The two of them had always had their Bond-Q relationship. Mac didn't mind. She liked behind-the-scenes better than being action girl anyway. Besides, she was smarter. Well, she always had been. Until now, when she'd suddenly lost all ability to form coherent thought.

She remembered when she first met Veronica, during her whole 'Purity Test' scam. From the very beginning, they'd hit it off. They both had a kind of badass inner strength, she with her hacker ability and V with her sleuth prowess. It set them up nicely.

But they hadn't been friends. Not really. Not until Veronica had been there when Mac's world had turned upside down.

_She sat in front of Veronica, trying not to jump out of her skin. "Suspense effectively built. Hit me." I'm adopted, right? Or a secret government test-tube baby they just placed with my parents as part of their cover-up. No! I got it! I'm an alien!_

"_It is big," Veronica replied anxiously, "like, life-altering big, so you should really think about if you want to hear it or if you'd rather just forget it and go on with your life. And may I suggest option B."_

_Suddenly serious, Mac couldn't help that little coil of fear growing in her stomach. It wasn't every day Veronica got so worked up about a case. Solving mysteries and revealing the cold, hard facts was what she did. "I'm adopted, aren't I? Go ahead and tell me, it would explain a lot."_

_When everything was laid open on the table, she felt sick. Switched at birth with Madison? She couldn't believe it. Wasn't that some kind of Lifetime Channel movie? It had been done on every extant soap opera at least twice. She was living a freaking television show. _

_Veronica stayed with her while the shock set in, while the anger set in, and while the betrayal washed over her. Her parents weren't her parents. She was half expecting that (though it still hurt). But to find out that she was the daughter of a family in the upper, upper crust—an 09er by blood and yet looked down on by them—was too much. What a life she could have had. The places she could have gone and things she could have seen. It wasn't right to miss out on that life just because the hospital made one stupid, negligent mistake. _

_When she was exhausted with the effort of not shedding tears, she finally chased Veronica away. But her friend still made a promise to investigate further and to check on her later. And she did. Twice. _

_Missing You, Veronica Mars_, she typed in, adding color and flair. She uploaded V's school picture and a picture of Lucky from his employment files. One press of a button, and every person's computer in the southwest would get this link in his e-mail and instant messenger boxes. Someone was bound to have seen something.

Letting out a heavy sigh, she opened a new window. _Now, on to this Goodman e-mail…_

_---_

She guessed it must have been near three miles that she trotted along on a twisted ankle before they saw anything. The cheap neon motel sign looked about as close to heaven as she ever figured she'd seen. The mere signs of life gave her some sense of hope. Where there were people and phones, there was potential. As long as he didn't tie her up again.

"You keep your head down and your mouth shut," he growled, pulling her along by an already bruised arm.

She knew she must look like hell. Her jacket sleeve was torn from the second time he'd shoved her down the embankment, revealing the raw skin of her scraped elbows. The gag and the blindfold had tied labyrinths of knots in her hair. There was a throbbing bruise developing where he'd struck her in the truck, and all the makeup she'd been wearing was likely smudged from sweat.

Yeah, keeping her head down would do the trick. Right.

"Just let me do the talking," he warned as he none-too-gently pushed her through the lobby door. "We need a room."

_The definition of smooth, this guy. _

"What the hell happened to you guys?" asked the kid in the glasses behind the counter, the picture of a loudmouth high school boy.

Mr. Bond beside her took a minute to flounder for an answer.

"We got a flat tire a few miles down the road," she answered quickly, rolling her eyes at the criminal mastermind who was glaring. "My door flew open when we hit the ditch and I didn't have my seatbelt on…" she trailed off, letting him imagine the rest. He didn't seem terribly concerned.

"Like I said," Lucky grumbled impetuously, "we need a room. You gonna help us or what?"

When the kid asked for a name and an ID, Lucky gave him a fake. She could give him credit for that much foresight. The fact that he was renting a room not ten miles from his abandoned, very identifiable truck was a point against him, so that evened the score again.

While the kid clacked away at the computer keyboard in front of him, Veronica looked around the place. It was a simple, run-of-the-mill crap shack with gaudy pressed carpeting and cheap florescent lights. Definitely overcharging for a single. Of course Lucky would get a single. It was less expensive and he could only have a very limited cash supply. But it left her wondering where she was sleeping. No way in the deepest circle of hell she was sleeping on the same bed as he was.

Trying to distract herself, she looked back at the scrawny kid in the glasses. He must have been new because it was taking too long to check them in, especially at a place like this. She studied his appearance for a moment. He looked nervous, his hands shaking a little on the keys. Definitely new. She tried to look into his eyes, but the reflection on his glasses made it difficult.

The tiny reflection of her. But the face she saw was clean and smiling. Her hair wasn't matted and her cheek wasn't bruised. She recognized the picture. It would take up a twelfth of a page in the yearbook come graduation. It was reflected off the kid's glasses from the screen in front of him.

She didn't want to breathe, as if holding it in would make Lucky not see it. As if the very act of drawing breath would jinx them somehow. But she knew she had no control. If he took even a second glance, he would see, and then the kid behind the desk was in trouble. Turns out he did have reason to be nervous.

"Uh, your room," he said, his voice trembling a little too much an octave higher than natural, "your room is gonna be…" He checked the computer screen again and then back behind him at a key rack. "…two…um…two twenty…"

Lucky was growing impatient, and that was never a good sign. "What's your problem, boy? You illiterate or something? Can't read the numbers right in front—"

Veronica saw it the second he noticed the reflection. He grew still, stiff, angry.

"What the hell is that?" It wasn't halfway out of his mouth before he yanked the monitor around and she was staring into his eyes and her own. Their pictures were displayed prominently with the words _Missing You, Veronica_ _Mars _across the top and a brief summary of her abduction. In the middle of the screen, an instant messenger window was open to a conversation with iMacgirl. _Mac. _The last few lines told their address at the motel and Mac's reply that the police had already been called.

Her relief brought tears to her eyes, short-lived as it was.

She saw the boy go for something under the counter and knew that everything was about to go wrong. Lucky saw it too because he pulled the gun from the back of his waistband so quickly she barely saw it.

_She'd been in dangerous situations before. Gangsters, murderers, desperate philanderers—she'd seen them all. Aaron Echolls had probably been her closest call yet. But even then she'd had a refrigerator door between her and the bad guy. Now there was nothing and she'd give anything for a refrigerator to hide in. _

_Liam Fitzpatrick's voice was soft and mocking. "So, I'm just gonna start in over here, and as soon as I hear something resembling the truth, I'll stop." _

_He poised the tattoo needle above her cheek, so close that she thought she could feel it. Cold. Sharp. Painful. Of course, his hand around her neck, choking whatever screams she would have attempted, was just as dangerous. _

_So much so that Logan's voice, familiar as her own, wasn't even heard over the heavy, rhythmic drumming inside her head. All she knew was that Liam's hand got tighter as he looked away at someone else. _

_Bits of conversation drifted in and out, unrecognizable in their fragmentation as the voices slurred together into one low rumble. "…ot 9-1-1…address h… one of those… blood… two minutes…"_

_When the hand around her neck disappeared, she shot up instinctively without understanding. She didn't know she'd been saved until she saw Logan holding a gun, and even then it wasn't a rescue. It was a stupid move that could have gotten him killed. She didn't appreciate it until long after "thank you" would have seemed untimely. _

She had little time to act as the two men drew, the younger a little slower than his elder._ Stupid boys and their guns. _A trigger was pulled.

---

"They're at the Stagecoach Motel just down the road from where you are," Mac said, her voice anxious and excited. Keith smiled, holding back his own excitement as he jumped back into his car. "The clerk said they were looking for a room for the night so you should be able to catch them. I already called the police and they should be on their way. Oh, and I'm still working on that recording. I'm checking into the other batboys but it'll take me a little while longer."

"Thanks Mac. I'll call you after the dust settles." He flipped his phone closed and gunned it away from the scene. In his rearview, he saw Weevil's Impala start and begin to follow, but he wasn't about to say no. He wouldn't waste the time to try. His baby was just down the road.

He'd arrived to find the truck stalled on the side of the road, flanked by three motor cycles and Weevil's eyesore of a car. With such company, he doubted anyone would have stopped to see if the truck needed help.

There wasn't anything terribly helpful inside, though. A beat up old shirt tied into what looked like a blindfold. A handkerchief gag. Some rope he knew must have held her hands. There was no blood. For that he was thankful. Even the lack of it on the ropes showed she hadn't put up a fight. Could be good or bad, depending.

He'd spent half an hour looking over the truck, fifteen minutes talking to Mac and calling every business in a ten-mile radius, and another twenty looking over the truck some more while Weevil and his boys scoped out the area. The engine was still warm when Weevil had gotten there. He knew they couldn't have gotten far without hitching.

And apparently they hadn't. A three minute drive and all of it could be over. A three minute drive and he would never let her out of his sight again.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: For some reason the chapter's not showing up, so I'm reposting it. Hopefully you guys will be able to see it now. _

_Yeah, so you guys have been pretty cool on the feedback. Thanks much for that. I must give special shout-outs to rhapsodysenigma, moustrich, and LoVe23 who reviewed every chapter thus far. Very cool. You guys rock my socks. Enjoy._

She watched from a distance as her father's car pulled into the parking lot and he jumped out of it. Her father. God, she missed him. So close and yet a lifetime away.

The blood drying on her hands was sticky and acrid. She tried once again to wipe it on her pants but it didn't come off. Somehow she thought it would never wash off. Everything was her fault.

_When Lucky pulled his gun, she had no time for strategy. Without thinking about the consequences, without thinking about the gun, she lunged at Lucky as hard as she could forcing them both against the counter as the gun went off. It wasn't fast enough. It may have saved the boy's head, but a bullet through the stomach was just as bad. She knew he probably wouldn't make it._

_When Lucky hit her, harder than she expected, she hit the floor and tasted blood. But she didn't much care. She launched herself behind the counter nonetheless, shedding her torn jacket and pressing it against the origin of the teenager's growing bloodstain. No kid his age should see his own blood pool._

_"Stay with me," she choked, tears sliding down her cheeks for the first time since she'd first called Lucky's name. Tears for another; none left for herself. "Please, stay with me." _

_Instinctively, she reached for the desk phone, but her hand grazed something else and she was hauled to her feet by a very unhappy Lucky. "Time to go." _

_Hazarding a glance back at the boy, she let one ragged sob escape. Just one. There was nothing else she could offer him. _

Now, sitting in the kid's boosted little Ford Focus, she watched her father slam through the door of the motel lobby and hoped he was in time to save him. She thought at least someone should have a chance tonight.

---

"We must have just missed them," Keith was saying, his voice clearly catching through the phone lines. "The boy behind the desk was barely conscious, but he said they had left not three minutes before. I sent a PCHer in every direction, but I had to stay and handle this. The kid was scared out of his mind and fading quickly."

"I got it," Logan replied, driving half-blinded by the damnable tears in his eyes. They'd been so close to finding her. "Is he going to be alright? The motel clerk, I mean."

"I don't know. The ambulance just took him away. They said it's touch-and-go. It's a damned shame."

_Deep breath_, Logan told himself. _Deep breath._ "We have to find her, Keith. That makes two teenage boys he's almost killed, and I wouldn't trust him to hold back because Veronica's a girl."

"I know." There was a defeat in the man's voice that Logan didn't much like, momentary as it was. "But we're doing everything we possibly can. The police out here are on high alert. It won't take long to find out the kid's car model, assuming it was his car they stole. Mac's bulletin gave us one tip; it'll lead to others. We will find her."

"We will," Logan sighed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "Hey, I see the truck. Where are you?"

"A few miles further. Keep going and you'll see the Stagecoach sign."

"See you soon."

He closed his phone and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. This wasn't the time to break down. Veronica needed him to be strong. Very rarely had he ever been the strong one of the two, but occasionally he had to be.

_She kneeled in front of him, tear-stained and humbled. He'd never seen her like this before. "I'm so sorry. I know now it wasn't you and I'm sorry I accused you."_

"_It's fine." And it was. He didn't care, as long as she was alright. "You okay?"_

"_It's not fine," she cried, and he couldn't stand the sound of it. "I'm really sorry."_

_It was unbelievable. She'd been raped, and his drugs had probably contributed to it, and yet she was kneeling in front of him begging his forgiveness. He had to stop it. "Veronica. All I care about is you. Okay? Did you find something out?" _

_A million questions had been killing him since the last time he'd talk to her. Who? How? Why? _

_Who? _

_When she'd told him everything about what happened with Duncan, he felt sick to his stomach. He'd caused her hell in the past and enjoyed almost every minute, but this was different. Even at their worst, he would never have wanted to hurt her like this. Even then he would have died to spare her that. _

_So he held her. Confessions would come later, but right then he just wanted to hold her and know that she was safe. _

Safe. It was amazing how many times in the last few years he'd worried for her safety. She was a girl who knew how to get in trouble, and usually she could find her way out of it. This time he was going to help. This time he _would_ be there to keep her safe. His promise to God.

---

"You need to get some sleep, baby," Alicia coddled, fidgeting with his blanket. Wallace didn't notice. Nor did he care. He wasn't sleeping until he either saw Veronica's face or heard her voice, telling him she was okay. Painkillers be damned, he wasn't sleeping.

"I'm alright, you know," he muttered, glancing back at her before looking out the window again. "Doctor said I'm going to be fine. You need to go home and get some rest as much as I do."

"I'm not going anywhere," his mother told him firmly, taking his hand in hers.

He knew she was trying to be comforting, trying to help. He didn't want it.

"I'm kinda hungry," he told her after a minute, a boldfaced lie in the face of the situation. "Could you, uh, could you get me something to eat. Anything." And for good measure, "And some apple juice."

She looked at him searchingly and he tried to seem sincere. Must have been sincere enough because she smiled and nodded and headed for the door. "I'll be ten minutes, tops."

He would only need a few.

As soon as she was out the door, he picked up the phone by the bed. He didn't know if anyone would be at the office, but it was worth a shot.

"Mars Investigation. Call back later," came a girl's voice, and he wished he could believe it was hers. But it wasn't.

"Who's this?"

"Mac," said the girl. "Who's this?"

"It's Wallace. What do you know?"

"Wallace? Are you okay? I heard you were—"

"Mac, focus." He didn't have time to waste. "What do you know about the Veronica situation? I don't have much time here."

There was a bit of a quaver in her voice. "Much time as in quarters running out or much time as in—"

"I'm freaking fine, Mac! Now tell me about Veronica."

"They're still looking," the girl said quickly. "We got a couple tips and almost got them at a motel near San Marcos. But we're still looking. Logan, the PCH bike club, half the sheriff's department, and Mr. Mars are all out there looking."

"Alright," he sighed. He guessed he couldn't ask for better news. Hell, yes he could. He could ask for V to be safe and sound and standing in front of him.

But wishful thinking was crap and he knew it.

"Thanks Mac," he mumbled, clearing his throat to get the simple phrase out. "Keep me informed, alright? I'm in room 347. Day or night."

"I will. Feel better, Wallace. We're all pulling for you."

He sighed, suddenly tired. But not enough to sleep. "Pull for V. That's all I need."

By the time Alicia returned, he'd wiped away all evidence of his tears.

---

They were on the backstreets again before the PCHer could catch a glance of them. Damn Lucky. He seemed to be living up to his name for the first time in his life. Bad freaking time for it too.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said just loud enough for him to hear. And she did. Truth be told, she'd had to go to the bathroom for almost an hour now, but she hadn't been about it bring it up. Now probably wasn't the best time either, but she felt like she was about to burst and when she was kidnapped she hadn't really been in a position to bring a change of clothes.

"Hold it."

"I have been," she muttered, though it hurt her jaw to talk. She had a feeling that by the end of this she'd look like a featherweight boxer after a fight. If she didn't end up in the morgue. _Stop it, Veronica_. "Look, if you don't pull over somewhere with a bathroom, this car is going to get really gross, really fast."

He let out an exasperated chuckle, his first sign of humor in what had to be hours, and clicked on his blinker at the next gas station. It took him four stops to find one with an outdoor restroom.

"I'll be standing right out here," he warned, and were it not for his voice it would have reminded her of that day at the Camelot again. But he wasn't Logan. In no way, shape, or form could she ever compare him to Logan.

When she was done going to the bathroom (the door closed, locked, and blockaded), she turned on the water and pulled out the cell phone she'd lifted from the unfortunate motel clerk. It wasn't like hers—bulky and obvious. It was thin, small, and had fit easily into her shoe. Thank God for small favors. And, praying that the kid had simply turned it off for work, she pressed the button to turn it on.

It sprung to life. Oh, good.

She dialed by heart and paced the floor as it rang, her eyes tearing with the prospect of hearing his voice on the other end. When another voice answered, she let out a sob of only slight disappointment.

"Logan?"


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: This chapter is dedicated to a reader named SeluciaV, who was amazing enough to leave me rave reviews in almost all of my stories in one sitting. Let me tell you, made my week. _

_So, a lot of you guys are yelling at me about leaving cliffies, and I just want to explain something to you. I'm writing this whole story in one, long document and then choosing chapter breaks arbitrarily by page number. So I don't actually choose to leave a cliffy to be evil; it's just a fringe benefit. Enjoy!_

"Veronica?" He looked at Keith as Keith looked at him, both shell-shocked and disbelieving. "Veronica, is that really you?"

He had left the oh-so-conspicuous X-Terra in the motel parking lot and hitched a ride with Keith as they headed blindly east. It was one less vehicle out there searching, but if he knew anything, he knew Keith would be the first to be informed, probably the first to find her. He wanted to be there when he did.

"Oh God, Logan." Her voice shook and he could hear her tears, the sound closing his throat. "You don't know how good it is to hear your voice."

"_Veronica," he whispered into her ear, and in her sleep her head turned of its own accord. He couldn't help but smile. She was beautiful in the morning. "Veronica, wake up."_

_Slowly she came back to herself, making soft little noises in her throat that made him think so many things he wished he could tell her. "It's Saturday morning," she whimpered, and he swallowed it with a kiss. When he pulled away, her eyes were half open, stardust and sunshine sparkling in them. "Mmm. Saturday morning kissage. I could get used to this."_

_He laughed. So could he. There was something about a girl wrapped in his sheets, wearing his clothes, smiling at him the way she was…he couldn't get enough of it. Even with no sex involved, he could so get used to it. _

"_What time is your dad getting back?" He played with a lock of her hair and tried not to sound worried. He was starting to hate the mornings she wasn't there. "I'm not really up for the third degree." Especially since, for once, he was being the good boy. _

_Her voice was still thick with sleep, her hair ruffled. He loved her. "Not till tonight. Plenty of time to sleep."_

"_Alright," he whispered, stroking her cheek gently. "You sleep." _

_She was already half there. "Talk to me, will you? I want to listen to your voice," she mumbled, wrapping her fingers around his against her neck. "That way when I dream…" yawn, "…I'll dream of you."_

"I just wish—" The painful hitch in her voice broke his heart. "And if 'ifs' and 'buts' were candy and nuts…" She trailed off on a humorless laugh, and he wondered what the end of the statement could be. "I have to talk to my dad. Where is he?"

"He's right here. We're coming to find you. Where are you?"

"There's no time, Logan. I need to say this in case I don't get another chance."

"Alright, alright," he sighed a sob. He didn't want to give her up. He wanted to tell her so but thought better of it, and then realized that it was stupid to rationalize just then. "I love you, Veronica," he blurted out instead, knowing it was what he really wanted to say. "I just needed you to know that."

And then before he could resist—keep her all to himself until one of them stopped breathing—he passed off the phone to Keith and put his head in his hands.

---

When he pressed the phone to his ear, the first thing Keith heard his daughter say was, "I love you too."

He promised himself he wouldn't cry. "It's me now, Sweetie, but I'll tell him."

"Dad?" Her voice jumped up an octave, but he could hear relief in it too. He remembered that voice coming from a walkie-talkie once. "God, Dad, I'm so scared."

"I know, honey," he choked out, trying to keep an eye on the road. Nothing would compel him to pull over right then and waste precious time. "I'm coming to find you. Can you tell me where you are?"

"We're at a Mobil off a minor highway just west of Escondido. I have to go, though. If I'm in here too much longer he'll probably break down the door."

"Veronica, I love you," he said desperately, needing to get it out. He knew people in these situations always wanted their last words to mean something. He hoped that they wouldn't be the last they shared, but the nagging voice inside his head told him not to tempt fate. "I'm coming to get you. Just hang in there."

"I love you. I'm going to keep the line open so you can trace it. No loud noises, Dad."

"That's my girl." He smiled sadly, handing the phone to Logan so he could concentrate on the road. "She's keeping it open. I need to you listen, and I need you to call Mac on your phone and have her trace the number is using."

The boy didn't wasted half a second following the order.

"Oh yeah," he said quietly, staring out the windshield. "And my daughter says she loves you."

---

She didn't want to leave the bathroom. Everything inside her screamed to just curl up in a corner and let the world pass by outside the door. But she knew it wasn't that easy. He'd get in sooner or later—and the later it was, the angrier he'd be.

The dingy mirror above the sink had three different shades of lipstick pressed near its frame. Marks left behind, doomed to be washed away in the night's closing. Still, brief as it was, it was a mark. She looked into the reflection at her broken, bruising face. Such marks would also fade…hopefully.

_She almost jerked around when someone touched her shoulder. Gut reaction. Emotional overload. Whatever. Even if she'd called the woman, Alicia standing there behind her came as a shock. _

"_Thanks for coming," she stuttered out, looking back at her father. "I didn't want him to wake up alone."_

"_I'll be here," the woman nodded, caught somewhere between her manners and the instinct to gasp at Keith's condition. Veronica was thankful for the manners. "Wallace is out in the hall. He wanted to drive you home."_

_The look on her best friend's face when she stepped out of the room was something she would never forget. It was all the things she expected, all the things she needed: strength, protectiveness, fear, relief, anger, love. She could have done without the anger—she'd had enough male anger in the past 24 hours—but she understood it. It wasn't for her. _

"_You're alright?" he asked, even though she was standing of her own volition not three feet from him. It was her father in the hospital bed. "I mean, seriously?"_

_She nodded and let him pull her into a hug. He was her Wallace. She was his V. Not even a can of gasoline and a Zippo were going to take that away from them. She didn't even care that his jacket was chaffing her bruised cheek. They held each other just as tightly as they could._

Touching the corner of her lip gently, she pulled back her finger and saw blood. She swallowed the metallic taste of it, but more just filled its place. Without thinking about it, she pressed her finger against the mirror, leaving a burnt red fingerprint behind. Now she had a mark there too.

An idea sent her mind racing and she dabbed her lip again. With a shaky finger, she smeared the blood over the mirror in what she could manage of legible letters. _Veronica Mars. White Ford Focus. TWV 668. East. Send police._

A pounding on the door made her smudge, but she didn't bother trying to fix it. She just washed her hands, splashed some water gently on her face, and slid the thin, still-transmitting cellular phone down the front of her shirt before slipping out the door. Lucky was, as promised, standing right outside with a sour look.

"What took you so long? I went and topped off the tank, came back, and you were still in there."

Damn. She'd missed a perfectly good chance to run. "I had to wash my face," she replied as passively as she could muster. "I look like hell and someone's going to notice soon if you don't stop hitting me."

His answer lent her no comfort, "Next time I'll go for someplace not quite so visible." He stopped her attempt to head back to the car with a hand on her arm. "Hold it."

For a second she thought she was caught. He was going to go into the bathroom and wipe the mirror. Or he'd heard her talking and knew about the phone.

"Hands on the wall." She just stared at him. "Don't look at me like that, Mars. There are a lot of things you could find in the bathroom that you might be planning to use against me."

"Name one."

He was silent for a minute. "Not the point. I'm still going to have to pat you down."

Veronica didn't know how this could possibly get worse. Of course, if he found the phone, it no-doubt would, but she was done playing the 'what if' game. Just then, being frisked by Lucky Dohanic outside a dingy Mobil restroom a hundred miles from home, she wanted to imagine this was the worst it could get.

Lucky ran his hands down her sides, over her hips, between her legs, and all the way down to her shoes. He took a moment to slide his hands over her breasts, softly enough not to notice the phone, but intimately enough to make her tremble. She wished it was just her imagination that he lingered there a moment longer than necessary, but then again he was a guy.

"Take off your shoes," he ordered, stepping away, and his voice was strangely hoarse. She didn't want to read into it.

She pulled off her shoes one at a time, holding each upside down and showing him the inside. No hidden weapons. He seemed satisfied.

"Alright, let's go. It's starting to get dark."

Her sights jerked up to the horizon and she let out a soft whimper. The sun was hanging dangerously low on the tree-line, and one thing she'd never wanted to see was Lucky in the dark.

---

Mac sat at the computer, pouring over Woody's records. She'd gotten a hold of one of the bat boys, but he had vehemently denied any kind of abuse. And if she hadn't believed him, his voice didn't match either of the ones on the recording. The third of the batboys was being elusive, but it wouldn't take long. She was good at what she did.

_She stepped into the office without a flourish. It had never been her way. But she stepped in confident nonetheless. It was always nice to end a day with a job well done. _

"_Roberto Nalbandion."_

_Veronica looked at her strangely, which she'd expected. That was definitely their way. "Who's Roberto Nalbandion?"_

"_I have no idea."_

_The expression got stranger and she reveled in her own mental game of _I Know Something You Don't Know_. "Okay, forgive me if as of yet, I'm unimpressed."_

_Alright. Enough fun with the She-Bond. "I don't know who he is but I do know that someone purchased his Argentinean passport off of eBay and had it shipped to the airport at Marriott."_

_Veronica smiled a delighted smile, a proud smile, and Mac loved it. It wasn't often she got to out-sleuth a sleuth. Sure, to her it was only a couple days work, barely a broken sweat to be found. But to those that weren't quite so fetishly attached to their computers, she was a freaking genius. She liked that. _

_Growing up, there hadn't been a lot of people she would call friends. Her eccentric tastes matched with her parents' bank balance had always kept her on the outskirts of most crowds. Her computer prowess had earned her a small following among the hackers and the hopelessly clueless, but it was never about her. _

_Somehow, with Veronica it was. Even if it was usually about computers, too. Still, there was something real about the girl. Something she hadn't seen very often before. It was nice, to have a girlfriend. _

She had already called the sheriff's department and given them what information Logan had given her about the phone Veronica was using. They were in the process of contacting the provider, obtaining a warrant, and activating the trace. While she waited for that call though, she would do what she could to find these witnesses.

So she looked into Goodman's past. He had been the owner of the Neptune Sharks baseball team (where Lucky had been a batboy). Before that he'd founded a very successful fast food chain.

_Wait, what?_

She'd been flipping through screens so quickly that she almost missed the small black and white picture in the corner of the window, the online newspaper article proudly proclaiming: "SHARKS LEAD WITH UNDEFEATED SEASON." What she hadn't noticed was that the picture hadn't been of grown men...

The ringing of the phone startled her, though the sound was quickly imbedding itself in her brain. Logan. Keith. Teachers. Reporters. The sheriff's department. All of them wanted a minute of her time tonight.

"Mars Investigations," she answered absently, hoping it wasn't another reporter. She was getting really tired of the reporters.

"Who's this?" Not the usual greeting.

"That depends. Who's this?"

"Weevil," the guy said, and she recognized the attitude. "What are you people doing, playing musical detective?"

"Name's Mac. I'm running the computer on Veronica's rescue operation," she answered his first question, not even bothering with the second. "Is there a reason you called or are you just wasting my time for the heck of it? Veronica—"

"Left a message in Escondido," he finished, and her mouth snapped shut. "On a mirror. In blood. Pretty sure it was hers, too, so you'd best be telling me what's up."

"You first. What'd the message say?"

"Headin' east in a white Focus. Plate number TWV 668."

She sighed. They knew all that from the motel clerk's DMV records. Still, it was good to know Veronica had left breadcrumbs…even if they were in blood and bullet wounds. "We have an open line on a cell she's hiding," she said, feeling like she owed him an explanation. "The sheriff's department is working on a trace right now. Should have her location within minutes."

She could almost see the head nod in his silence. "Alright. Keep me informed."

He left her with his number and a few bits of sarcasm. Seemed vaguely inappropriate, but a little humor in an otherwise morose situation was more than moderately welcomed. When the phone rang again a minute later, she almost expected to hear his voice.

Instead she heard that of the deputy she'd talked to before. "Mac, I've got a couple gems for you."

She smiled. "Hit me."

Once she'd heard her fill and the line clicked, she dialed faster than she ever thought possible.


	9. Chapter 9

"What do you have?" Logan demanded, recognizing the number and not even bothering with a greeting.

"Two things, both extremely important," she replied, eagerness obvious in her voice. "First, they're headed east on 78, just on the other end of Escondido. I figure you'd gotten that, but now the trace is open so the sheriff's department will let us know if they make any turns or stops."

He let out a breath. "Okay. And the other thing?"

"As of twenty minutes ago, a warrant was issued for Lucky on the charge of murder in the first."

He choked. Keith had already told him about how and why Veronica had ended up a hostage.

"It wasn't Wallace, was it?" he stammered out, and Keith looked at him sharply.

"Oh! No, no, no," Mac said quickly. "I talked to Wallace, like, two hours ago. He's fine. He's just worried like the rest of us. No, it was the motel clerk. He didn't make it."

Logan wanted to feel sorry about that but he didn't. Veronica would have been crushed if it were Wallace. More than crushed. Catatonic. He had the feeling she'd been through enough today.

"But what that means," the girl continued, "is that, if Lucky finds out about this—if he turns on the radio and catches the news—we have no idea how he'll react. The term, 'Nothing to lose,' jumps to mind."

From what he could hear on Keith's cell phone, Lucky was strictly listening to less-talk/more-music stations. Still, if there was a news bulletin, they were screwed. "I'll keep that in mind," he told Mac. "Is there anything else?"

She paused, and then there was a sound he mused might be her palm hitting her forehead. "Oh, jeez, I almost forgot. So yeah, did you guys know that Woody coached a little league team named the Sharks?"

"No," he said hesitantly, "but what does Woody Goodman have to do with this?"

Keith's head jerked toward him and he knew he was missing something.

Mac sounded a little uncomfortable, mumbling a low, "Look, I'll let Keith fill you in on that. Just tell him that the Sharks was Woody's little league team and I'm looking into the players. Maybe I can find the voices on the recording." The click on the line was abrupt, and he stared at the phone for a moment before closing it.

"What about Woody?" Keith asked tensely. When he told him verbatim what Mac had said, Keith's face took on a whole new kind of anger.

"What is it, Keith?" The man's stance set off a six-piece orchestra of warning bells in his head. "Where does Woody fit into all this?"

By the time Keith was finished updating him on the e-mails, the recording, and how the latest news fit in, he thought he might be sick. He remembered when he interned for the mayor's office, how Woody had spoken to him. How he'd touched his arm that one time. Things began falling in line in his head, and the nausea intensified.

"I knew there was something off about him. He was always a little too close. Little creepy. But I figured it was my imagination."

"That's how abuse always starts," he whispered, his voice tightly even. "Everyone always thinks it's his imagination."

"So we think Woody's a perv, huh? That he did something to Lucky during his whole batboy thing and that's what made him snap?"

Keith nodded imperceptibly.

Logan's curse was audible enough, but he thought under the circumstances Keith would probably let it go.

---

The sun had set behind the trees, sending peek-a-boo shadows across Lucky's face. Veronica watched them flicker and flee as his eyes began to close. The car began to drift.

"Lucky!" she half-shouted, resisting the urge to hit him. She didn't want to be hit back.

His eyes popped open again and he righted the car, but that didn't make her feel any better. It had already happened half-a-dozen times before.

"Look, Lucky, either we have to pull over and sleep or you have to let me drive." Man, was she itching for control of the wheel.

"Fat chance, Mars," he chuckled as if he'd heard the thought. "Like I'd trust you not to drive me to the nearest police station. Or better yet, into the nearest tree."

She shrugged, her trademark smirk making a brief appearance though it was doubtful he could see it under the bruises. "Well, genius, if I hadn't been screaming at you every few minutes, you would have done that for me twenty minutes ago."

He made a growling sound low in his throat and began looking around for a place to turn off.

Soon enough, they turned into a recreational area and then began off-roading it, the highway disappearing behind a few miles of rivers and rock formations in the rearview mirror. Lucky took the keys from the ignition, stuck them deep in his front pocket, and popped the trunk. She waited patiently, knowing she wouldn't get far if she ran, as he scrounged to see what a sixteen-year­-old boy kept lying around.

When he came back, she almost started to cry. "Scoot over here." Her head shake only made his command louder. "Don't play with me, Mars. Get your ass in this seat or I'll physically put you there." With a sigh and an exhausted laugh, she lifted herself over the gear shift and into the driver's seat. "Hands on the wheel."

She raised her hands compliantly and rested them at ten and two, making sure her fingers were as loose as possible when he wrapped half the roll of duct tape around them and the wheel. Let him tie her up. She could care less. Just the idea of him asleep and silent and not looking at her anymore made her feel all warm and tingly. Minus the warm part. She really wished she still had her jacket.

Tearing off the end, he jostled her hands to make sure it was tight. The tape held painfully well.

"Comfy?" he sneered and then closed the door and got into the back seat. She craned her neck and saw him dig in his pocket, extracting a bottle of pills and then downing one without water. "Sleep well, Veronica," he said, tucking the gun underneath him as he lay back with his arms behind his head. "I certainly will."

---

"They've stopped," Mac said, and Keith let out a long, relieved sigh. Logan was still listening to Veronica's conversation and Keith had picked up his phone while they were stopped at a gas station. "They turned off the highway at Old Kane Springs Road and now seem to be off-road somewhere. The police and rangers are already on the way."

"You're a saint, Mac," he smiled, calling out to Logan in the car. "They're stopped somewhere off-road in the state park. Police are on their way and so are we."

"They've stopped to sleep," he called back, pressing the phone to his chest to muffle the sound. "We should have a couple hours to catch up with them."

"They're sleeping," Keith breathed, hoping this time would be better. This time they wouldn't get away. This time, he would protect her.

_Just another night at the office, and Veronica should have been there by now. She had said she'd be back straight after the field trip to catch up on some filing, but it was getting late and she hadn't called yet. Neither had the police or the hospital, but that wasn't a terribly comforting idea. It was possible she was just out with Duncan. But then she would have called..._

_When she walked in, he wasn't sure if he should hug her or strangle her. "Veronica, do you know what time it is? If you were planning to—"_

"_The bus went over a cliff," she whispered, her voice scratchy, and he couldn't have spoken if he'd known what to say. "They took off without me when we stopped at a gas station, and then they went over a cliff."_

"_What...But, I mean...all those kids..." His words like his thoughts came out gibberish, and he pulled her into a desperate hug. It was Lilly Kane all over again. Young kids dying way before their due. "Duncan?"_

_The careful control she must have been holding for hours was slowly cracking, and her eyes began to water with the strain. "He and some of the 09ers had gotten a limo for the ride back. They're fine."_

"_Are there any—"_

"_Meg Manning," she answered before he could ask, and he knew she'd been dying to say it. There was guilt written all over her face, and he wished he knew why. "She's in the ICU, but she's alive. That's it. The rest of them are..."_

_She couldn't say it and he didn't want her to. He was just so grateful she wasn't on that bus. _

"_It wasn't an accident, Dad. I don't think it could have been an accident._

_And now it really was Lilly Kane...all over again. _

He cleared his throat thickly, and Logan gave him a weird look. "They should stay put for a couple hours or so. Did you find anything on Woody's little leaguers yet?"

"Actually," the girl replied, clearly proud of herself, "did you know that three of them dropped off the team quite unexpectedly the first year he coached? I haven't found the names of the kids yet, but it was in the papers and everything. The team was number one until it happened and then dropped to sixth in the region when they forfeited the rest of the season. A lot of parents went nuts over it."

She had Keith's undivided attention. "Three? The recording talked about what he did to the three of them. Does it say why they dropped?"

"Nope, but…" she paused and he fidgeted nervously as the gas pump clicked full, "…oh my gosh."

"What?" The line was silent. "Mac, talk to me."

"I found the kids' names, and you'll never believe it."

He got in the car and closed the door, waiting to start the engine until she answered. "Pins and needles here." Logan, too, seemed to be waiting for it.

"One of the boys dropped because he moved, but the other two…I don't know if you believe in coincidence, Mr. Mars, but the other two boys were Marcos Oliveres and Peter Ferrer."

He dropped the phone.

---

When she was sure Lucky was good and asleep, his pill having done its job well, she looked at her hands and chuckled. This would take a little creative maneuvering. She tensed her arms and scooted to the side, gaining leverage against the center console as she turned the wheel to her left. The tape strained painfully against her already raw wrists, but it didn't matter much. Her body was all scrapes and bruises by now anyway.

"Lucky's asleep. I'm going to try to get out of here," she whispered between gasps and grunts to whoever was listening. "Whatever you hear, don't be afraid."

When her hand was at 3 o'clock, she scooted back and leaned forward until she could clasp the top of the tape between her teeth. The end was somewhere underneath; she couldn't reach it. But maybe if she could pull at it, tear at it—the tape would give. It had to.

This was her chance, maybe the only one she'd get.

She shifted her wrists up and down, loosening the tape millimeter by millimeter. Lucky had been in the military; he knew how to keep someone secured. But it was her lucky day and the tape was cheap. Hurt like hell, but the adhesive wasn't strong. The fact that he'd wrapped the roll half a dozen times around each hand didn't help her cause, but all she needed was a little time. Idiot shouldn't have taken that pill.

The night was dark outside the windshield and she tried not to look. There were no lights way out there in the middle of the park, only the moon and the stars to keep her company. And the sound of Lucky's soft snoring.

For the first time in her life, out there in the darkness, she was completely alone.

Between rips and tears, just loud enough so she could hear it, she began to sing. "Someday…when I'm awfully low…when the world is cold…I will feel a glow just thinking of you…and the way you look tonight."

Another layer peeled back, Another break in the skin.

"Yes, you're lovely…with your smile so long…and your cheeks so soft…there is nothing for me but to love you…and the way you look tonight." The sound floated through the silence and she laughed at it. Laughed at herself. She didn't even know she was crying until she was sobbing. "When I get out of this," she whispered to the phone in her bra, "please don't hold this moment of weakness against me."

Again she laughed as she worked at the tape. She was too far gone by now. She hadn't eaten since noon, hadn't been even close to calm since before the sadistic week of finals had begun. She was running on nothing but whispery fumes. And there was no doubt in her mind—if she didn't get away, she was going to die.

"With each word, your tenderness grows…" Rip. Whimper. Sigh. "…tearing my fear apart…and that laugh wrinkles your nose…touches my foolish heart."

When the last layer peeled away, it felt like her skin came with it and she couldn't help but cry out.

The car fell silent. Lucky was still snoring and she began to breathe again.

She took half a second to extract the phone and anchor it between her shoulder and ear before she began to unwind her other hand. "Hello? Is someone there?"


	10. Chapter 10

"Veronica," Logan answered, his surprise and relief stretching the distance between them. "Can you hear me?"

"I'm here." Her voice was rushed, out of breath. He heard a few short, painful gasps as, he assumed, she tore her other hand free. "Oh, god, Logan, I'm really getting out of here."

Her breathing changed. She started huffing. Running. He would have smiled and screamed and jumped up and down if he could trust the relief. But she was still out there and they were still miles away. Still, he couldn't keep the hope from his voice when he told Keith she was on the move.

"What's around you? Where are you going?"

"It's so dark," she huffed, still whispering like Lucky might hear. "I just need to get as far away as I can."

"In which direction are you running?"

She actually laughed that sarcastic little laugh of hers between huffs. "Which do you think? The road is north."

He tried not to sigh at her shortness. She was tired. He could understand that. "Don't push yourself too hard, okay? I don't want you having a heart attack or anything. If Lucky is out for the night, you can afford to pace yourself a little."

"Not gonna happen." Wheeze. "I don't know how powerful that sleeping pill really is, and I'm putting as much distance between us as humanly possible." He didn't like that answer, rational as it was, and he knew she knew it. After a moment, her breathing got even heavier and then slowed as she stopped a moment. "Look, as soon as I get a couple miles away and find someplace to hide, I'll stop and sleep for a few hours. But not long. He has a car and a gun, Logan." Then softly. "I'm scared."

"I know baby. Just hold on. We're tracking your phone."

She paused, and then her voice was sad. "Logan, I have to hang up. The battery won't last this way, and if it dies, the trace is gone."

No. He couldn't. Not again. "How much do you have?"

"It's been on two bars for a while now. If we keep talking, it'll be dead in half an hour."

"And if we hang up?"

Another pause. She was always good with the ominous, dramatic pauses. "A couple hours. Maybe less. This thing is pretty cheap and the battery probably only lasts a few hours on active."

He had to let go. It was the only way to save her. He knew it. Didn't make it any easier, and he knew he sounded pathetic. "I don't want to lose you again."

"I'll call you when I find someplace to sleep," she promised, but he still wanted to argue. He wanted to listen to her voice and know that she was still there. Still breathing. "I'll be okay, Logan. I promise."

He laughed incredulously. "Yeah, and if you're not? What do I get then?"

That sarcastic smile of hers shined through the line. "To have been right for the first time in our relationship."

"I love you." It had become their tag line, those three little words. In a matter of hours, they'd gone from cold-shoulder silence to whispered words of devotion. Desperation could do that to people. No time for second thoughts, no vows to make it up later. He couldn't pretend that he'd get the chance to make amends.

"_Dude, what are you doing?" he asked jovially, watching Dick tear off a strip of red painter's tape. It had been a hell of a day as all the students in the damned school ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. The purity test results had been circulated by 6a.m., and everyone's dirty laundry was airing in plain view. Except maybe his. He didn't need to take a stupid test to know how little purity there was left in him. He'd be in negative numbers. _

"_Calling a skank a skank," Dick laughed as he slapped the piece on a locker. _

_Logan arched his eyebrows curiously. There weren't many girls in the school who could keep Dick's attention long enough to cause the anger triggering the sadistic happiness his friend seemed to be feeling. But then…there it was…Veronica Mars' locker._

_A few more pieces spelled her score, and he had to hide surprise behind a laugh. It had to be a joke. Veronica Mars was a lot of things, but a freaking 14 was definitely not one of them. _

_Curiosity led him to the computer lab, punching in a paypal number and reading through her test. Curiosity. Not anger or regret or a vague sense of guilt for her broken reputation. Nope. Nuh-uh. Pure, healthy curiosity. And it was none of those things that made him sick to his stomach when he read the thing. _

_Veronica didn't take that test. He knew it, and anyone who knew anything about her would know it. Even the drunk and out of control Veronica he'd seen at Shelly Pomroy's party wouldn't have had a mile-high three-way. Besides, how would she afford the plane ticket?_

_Someone had posted the test for her. That much was obvious. One of his friends, no doubt. _

_And of course, he felt no guilt about that either. No regret. No wish to make it right. Nope. He was Logan Echolls. Not a chivalrous bone in his body. After all, he was probably the only person who would've had a score lower than she did. _

"I love you too," she whispered quickly, anxiously. "Please hurry."

And then the line clicked. She was gone again.

* * *

Wallace was tired of being told to rest. Jackie, his mother, the nurses, the doctors, the pain medication—they all told him to close his eyes and drift off. It was driving him half mad.

"I am not gonna relax, Jackie," he told her for the third time, though the yawn he tried to stifle belied his protests. "It doesn't matter how much warm milk and chamomile you give me, I'm not gonna sleep till Veronica calls me or walks through that damned door."

"But it's been hours, Wallace! You're exhausted. I'm sure Veronica will forgive you for taking a nap." Her voice was soft, concerned, and he just wished everyone would stop acting like he was dying. The bullet didn't hit home. His crisis was averted…by that very same blond girl who's crisis had yet to be. Somehow no one seemed to understand that.

He shook his head, more to clear it than to accentuate a point. "Not gonna happen. Sorry. I'll cut the painkillers first."

"You're not cutting your medication," Alicia said as she walked in. "And if you don't at least take it easy, I'll have the doctors put you out, understand?"

_No!_ he wanted to scream because he didn't understand. He couldn't understand why everyone kept telling him to relax, take it easy, get some rest. How the hell was he supposed to rest when the one person in the world who he could count on when the world went to hell was dying every moment in his mind? He closed his eyes and that was all he could see. For eight hours he'd been going insane, inch by inch. Why couldn't they see?

But then no one really saw Veronica the way he did.

_With very few exceptions, Veronica had always been there for him. When he was tied to a pole, she had cut him down. When he was blackmailed off the basketball team, she had found Polly. When he'd been kicked off the team and labeled a drug user, she'd made a room full of executives tie their own nooses without breaking a sweat. She was there, no matter what. _

_But this time it wasn't just about basketball. This time it was good, old-fashioned, hit-and-run murder. _

_And she was still there. _

_When all was said and done, she didn't shame him for running out on his responsibility…or even for running out on her. She did what it took. She went the extra mile. She saved his life, in a matter of speaking. _

_Now it seemed all too familiar. _

"I need a few minutes," he said, looking down at his hands and the hospital band around his wrist. They didn't say anything. They didn't have to. The skeptical stares said it all. "I'm not going to move or run or try to jump out the window." They still just stared, and he rolled his eyes. "I promise. No heavy lifting; no shimmying down the drainpipe."

Jackie stood up and looked down at him with her sad eyes. Alicia was more reluctant but did as he asked anyway. He guessed a gunshot wound could pull more than a few sympathy points. When the door shut behind them, he pulled the phone onto his lap again and dialed a number that was become all too automatic.

"Mars Investigations."

"How's it going?"

He heard Mac sigh, as if she was tiring of the question. It was very likely she was. He didn't care. He'd ask a hundred more times if that's what it took. But her voice was soft when she spoke. Anxious. Hopeful. "She's out of the car, Wallace. We haven't picked her up yet, but she's away from Lucky and on the move."

It seemed like he hadn't breathed in hours. Days. But she was okay. She was up and running and somehow away from the psychopath with the gun.

He knew that gun. Hurt like a son of bitch.

"How long till she gets picked up?" The sooner he heard her voice, the sooner he could relax. The sooner he could relax, the sooner he could go to sleep and Alicia could stop fussing over him. Alright, so that was a little selfish. V would forgive him.

She paused. He didn't like that answer. "Forty minutes. Possibly more depending on how fast Keith can drive off-road in the dark."

"Off-road? Where the hell is she?" Off-road in California usually meant way out in the middle of nowhere. No lights. No traffic. No one to hear the screams. Nuh-uh. Wasn't even gonna let his mind go there.

"They're out in the state park, but it's not even too far in." He could tell she was trying to be comforting. Wasn't working that well. "She even has cell phone reception. That's how we're tracking her."

"And she hasn't called her BFF? I think I might be hurt." He struggled to laugh a little, trying humor on for size. It didn't seem to fit. All he could manage was halfhearted exhalation that sounded almost like a chuckle.

"Don't feel bad," Mac replied just as blandly. "She hasn't called me either, and I'm the brains of the operation."

At that he did laugh. A little. He managed a smile, anyway. "When you talk to her," he said, deliberately not saying 'if,' "tell her to call me. I figure once she's out of harm's way, the girl can spare a second for an injured man."

"Get some rest, Wallace."

Again, he managed a downcast little smile. "Now don't you go starting that, too."

* * *

"They're not coming."

"What?"

"The police, Keith, they're not coming. They had an emergency." Even a hundred miles away, Mac ducked and braced herself for the explosion. "Liquor store holdup in Scissors Crossing. The night manager got stabbed. Big car chase."

"An emergency!" And there it was. Ka-boom. "She has been gone almost eight hours with a wanted murderer! How does that not take precedence?" Logan's low-spoken voice was just barely audible, but she heard it. _What's going on, Keith? What's happening?_

"Jurisdiction issues?" she mused, her voice as innocent as she could make it. "I don't know Keith, but you'll get Veronica. Who needs the police when Keith Mars is on the case?"

He did not seem pacified. "I'm going to have someone's badge for this, and surprising, it won't be Lamb's this time."

"He's on his way," she said quickly, trying to appease him. "Lamb and three of his deputies are coming out personally. He started out a little after the biker's found the truck, so he's only about twenty minutes behind you."

She heard his deep sigh and Logan's frantic questions on the other end. "Well, thank God for small favors. What's going on with the Goodman case?"

Finally, a safe topic. "Well, we know the two voices on the recording are Marcos and Peter, but I don't think the third voice—the one that was cut out—was Lucky. I've listened to the thing about a hundred times, and it sounds like French in the background. Like French class. The third kid Woody molested was another high school student. I'm working on identifying the kids in the Shark's team picture, and then I can cross-reference them with the roster I have of Peter and Marco's French class."

Keith was silent. She recognized the sound of it, and felt a little shot of satisfaction run up her spine. She loved when she stunned them speechless. "Well it, uh…it looks like you've got that pretty well in hand. So once we have the third, we'll have something to put Woody away with."

"Not just that." This time the shiver wasn't excitement. She didn't want to be right about this. "When Peter and Marcos were talking about outing Goodman, it seemed like they were meeting resistance. A lot of it. I think…I think whoever's the third caused the crash…to shut up them up."

Again, stunned speechless. This time she didn't like it so much.

"Let me know what you find. I'll call you when I'm closer." His voice was soft, thoughtful, sad. It was a lot to swallow in one bite, though smaller pieces wouldn't have helped. Either way, it burned going down.

"Over and out," she whispered back before she hung up. It was doubtful he heard. She didn't care.

The room was so silent, lonely without a voice on the line, that it took more than a minute to notice the boy standing in front of her. And when she did, she jumped about half a foot in the air, surprised despite his harmlessness.

"Jeez, Cassidy! Where did you come from?"


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: In honor of the incredibly cute ending to tonight's episode and the 32 amazing reviews I received for the last chapter, I'm putting this one out early. However, this comes with the warning that I've just about run out of already-written chapters and I have a million things going on, so it'll be a couple weeks before the next one's out. Sorry guys. Enjoy. _

She was dead. Mentally, emotionally, physically—she was breaking down. If she was going to make it till sunrise with a pulse and an ounce of sanity, a hiding spot had jumped to the top of her priority list.

But it was so dark, and she was so cold. Even in California, the desert dropped down to the 60s at night and her blood-soaked jacket was probably in an evidence locker by now.

To her right, she saw sparse greenery and flat land highlighted in faint, bluish moonlight. That wouldn't cut it. To her left was a wall of rock too tall to climb in her condition. Besides, the blood on her scraped palms would leave breadcrumbs. She needed to disappear.

Up ahead was a river that she didn't want to wade through—pneumonia really didn't appeal to her—but that left her boxed in. Looked like she'd found her dead end.

She stumbled down a shallow embankment to the edge of the river and fell to her knees, sweat-soaked and breathing hard. She dipped her hands in, the water still warm from the sun but achingly cold on her raw skin. It felt good. It gave her a jolt. It would probably buy her another twenty minutes of consciousness.

When the blood was washed away, leaving her hands a blotchy pink instead of the red she'd grown used to, she cupped the water and took a drink. Her throat was suddenly dry, her stomach suddenly empty. In the midst of everything, she hadn't had time to notice things like hunger or thirst. Her mind was all fear and hope and bruising flesh. But now she was dying of all the things she lacked.

And her thoughts weren't making any sense at all.

She watched the moon on the water as it rippled and had the clichéd thought. Her father could be looking up at that exact same moon, wondering where she was. Logan could be. Weevil could be. Even Duncan could be, if it was night wherever he was. She wanted one of them with her, keeping her safe and warm. Didn't matter which. She just wanted one of her favorite men to hold her right then.

Looking right and left and back behind her, it seemed like she'd be falling asleep right there in the open on the hard dirt ground. No grass to cushion her head; no mud to cradle footprints.

And then she saw it, hidden in the shadows. A cleft in the wall. A place to crawl through. A freaking gift from God.

She drank her fill and wiped her hands on her pants before stumbling back to the fissure and squeezing herself through into the dark. A couple yards in there was a turn and then another, hiding her from all possible views. It was dry, a little warmer than outside, and gave her space to stretch her legs. It was more than enough. The only other things she could have asked for were a bed and a door to lock.

She dialed a number on autopilot, but for the life of her she couldn't distinguish whose it was. Her dad's? Logan's? Wallace's maybe? Again, it didn't matter. She just wanted one of her favorite men.

"Veronica?" Door number two and she smiled through cracked lips.

"I'm here," she laughed tears, enjoying the familiarity of his voice. "I found a place to hide. I'm safe for the moment."

He sighed white-noise relief and she wanted to see him smile. Hear it even. But he sounded all furrowed brows and frowns. "We'll be there soon. I promise. Half-hour or so. You just hang tight."

"I'm trying," she whispered, and cringed at the echo. "But I'm cold and hurting and I really need a bed." She didn't want to sound needy and helpless, but she was. "I just want to go home."

His breathing seemed to get heavier. Panicky. Her dad's worried voice filtered through in indistinguishable fragments, but the only words that made sense were Logan's. "How hurt are you, Veronica? Are you alright?"

"Just cuts and bruises," she told him, hoping he believed her. She wanted them to move their asses, but blind panic wasn't going to help anyone. "Really, Logan, I'm fine. I just need to get out of here."

His pause was tense, uncomfortable. She didn't like it. It worried her.

"He hit you." Again, Keith's fractured speech shaped their background noise. _Hit...kill the…better be…is she…eight damn hours…jurisdiction issues my…_

"What?"

Logan's voice tight, angry, he repeated himself and ignored Keith's frustrated ramblings, "Back at the gas station, right before he…" he seemed to choke on the words, "…patted you down, you said that if he didn't stop hitting you people would start to notice."

"I did say that, didn't I?" She didn't want to be having this conversation. Not now when she was so tired and he was so far away. Not when she was so scared that she would die out here in the dark.

"Tell me, Veronica. How many times did he hit you?" His voice was hoarse. "What else did he do when I couldn't hear?"

"I'm okay, Logan, I promise," she whispered, wiping a silent tear on hands suddenly dirty again. "He only hit me twice, and both times I—" She stopped herself, sickened by what she had been about to say. "I did something to trigger it. He hasn't done anything without some kind of provocation. Besides, I escaped, remember? He's not going to touch me again."

She heard him growl low in his chest, and part of her liked the sound of it. It was protective, animalistic. Without words, it swore that he would never let her come to harm if it was within his power to protect her. It had been a while since she'd last heard that growl.

_When Logan's car window shattered with them inside, she insisted he stay the night at the apartment. She didn't like the idea of him alone in that big house. For her own peace of mind if nothing else, she begged him not to go. _

_So Keith had made him a place on the couch and then dropped a few mild threats before heading to bed. Even he didn't think they'd fool around in an apartment with crepe-paper walls. _

_It wasn't until she'd showered, changed, and gotten into bed that she let herself cry. They could have died. She didn't know if it was the biker's planning or simple dumb luck that they'd been laying down at that exact moment, but the what ifs made her feel sick._

_She didn't hear the knock on her door—didn't know if there was one—but suddenly his arms were around her and she was sobbing into his bare chest. _

"_Shh," he whispered, rubbing circles on her back. "You're okay. We're okay."_

"_We could have…I mean, what…" After a moment she didn't even try anymore. There were no words. _

_He pulled away, and her eyes traced the cuts on his arms as he looked her over. When his eyes found the single, long scratch on the side of her neck as she knew they would, she heard him growl, angry at the biker and himself and anything that could have led to that mark. She didn't think she would ever forget the sound._

"He'd better hope the cops find him before I do," he bit, and she wanted so much to be there with him, to stroke his back and make him see that everything would be alright. Even if she didn't believe it herself, she would make him. Peace of mind was simple in place of so many more complicated requests. Forgiveness? Understanding? Trust? Love? If she was willing to give him those things, peace of mind was child's play.

"How's Wallace?" she asked, dying for the subject change. "Have you heard anything about how he's doing?"

"He's fine," he said quickly, and then paused to smooth out his voice. If she didn't know him so well, it would have made her suspicious. "Mac has been talking to him every couple hours, keeping him up-to-date on you. He's recovering fine in the hospital. Alicia and Jackie are hovering over him so he doesn't sneak out the window. Especially with him being on the third floor."

Veronica laughed the first genuine laugh she'd heard all night. It felt good despite her split lip. "Tell him I said to keep his ass in that bed or I'll kick it all the way back there."

His voice, too, was amused. "I don't think that'll keep him there, Veronica. For you to kick his ass means he'd get to see you."

He made an excellent point. "Well then, tell him I'll never forgive him. That may hold more sway."

Logan was quiet again, and she ached to hear his voice, to talk of normal things like school and friends and love. But school was where Lucky had taken her and her friend was why she had let him. Love seemed too complicated for phone lines, though she'd let herself be simple for desperation's sake.

"I do love you," she told him, leaning her head back against the rock. "You know that, right?"

There were tears in his voice again, whispery soft. "Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like it's the last time you'll ever say it."

She chuckled a teary laugh, unwilling to tell him how worried she was that it might be. He probably knew anyway. Lucky was still close and becoming less stable by the moment, bipolar disorder taken to a whole new extreme. One minute he was almost normal. The next he was putting a bullet through a teenage boy even younger than she. If something went wrong, she didn't want… "I love you," she repeated, keeping her voice light. "See, now it couldn't have been the last time."

His sigh came through as static, a rush of air half-laughter, half-heartbreak. "I love you, too. Even if you are crazy."

* * *

Even with the windows rolled up, the sound of motorcycles was almost deafening. That is, if he hadn't been used to it. The entire club was following him now, following his lead as he followed nothing but vague and out-of-date directions. He needed more than that if he was going to find her, though.

"Where's my girl, Mac?"

"Who's this?"

"Didn't we already do this?"

"Weevil?" She chuckled, but he could hear the strain in it. "I swear, you guys are all trying to drive me crazy."

"Just tell me what you've got on V, and I'll let you get back to whatever it is that you're doing."

"Last time I heard, Lucky was asleep and she was out of the car and running in the Anza-Borrego State Park. The trace I have on her cell seems to have stopped for the moment, so either she's lost the cell or she's in hiding. Either way, Keith and Logan are about half an hour away." She seemed to rattle it off like a rehearsed bit, unemotional and detached. But he could hear the worry in the way her voice pitched and escalated. The way she sped through Lucky's name and the word _lost_. She was as upset as the rest of them were.

Not that he'd admit it and ruin his well-established reputation. Nope. The only reason he'd even brought the boys into this was because Veronica needed all the help she could get. Besides, they owed him one too many favors and this seemed like the appropriate occasion to call them in.

But he was. Upset, that is. Up the freaking wall, out-of-his-mind worried for the little pain in the ass. She was cool most of the time. He liked to think of her as his girl, though not in any kind of tap-that sense. She was spunky. Wasn't afraid of him like the rest of the sane world. Wasn't afraid of anything.

"_My bitch." He leaned over the snitch, getting right in his face. Standard intimidation tactics. "Weren't you supposed to wait for me by the flagpole? I'm not sure I could have made that any clearer."_

_The kid looked very close to wetting himself, and he liked seeing it. It was fun. Besides, the kid got two of his boys arrested for something so stupid as lifting a six-pack. Stupid. _

"_Okay, I get it, a'right. Very funny. I guess we're even now. Right?"_

_Kid didn't know when to keep his head down and shut up. Obviously new. The locals all knew not to talk back. Better hope he was a quick study. "You get what boy? You get that you're a dead man walking, is that what you get?"_

_And then out of the silence. "Leave him alone."_

_He looked up at the girl, surprised beyond the telling of it. Veronica Mars. She'd grown a backbone since those times he'd seen her traipsing around with Lilly. He didn't think he'd ever heard her voice before. _

"_Sister," he grinned, loving a challenge, even in the form of a tiny blond thing with more guts than brains, "the only time I care what a woman has to say is when she's riding my big old hog, but even then it's not so much words. Just a bunch of oohs and ahs, you know?"_

"_So it's big, huh?" Cocky. That's what she was. Guts out the freaking wazoo. _

"_Legendary."_

"_Well let's see it." Not the answer he was expecting, and he didn't know if he should be angry or amused. "I mean if it's as big as you say, I'll be your girlfriend. We could go to prom together."_

_Definitely something, that girl. Maybe the brains and guts assumption was a little premature._

"Where exactly am I going, girl?" he asked, smirking a little at the memory before it sunk to regret in the pit of his stomach. "It's a big park and I don't have enough guys to search the whole damned thing."

She gave directions and he listened, for once without comment. More vague guidelines that would lead him to only general locations, but he didn't complain. Mac was just another of V's friends, doing the best she could.

Just like he was.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: It's strange. I'm trying to write about three chapters ahead, so by the time I post, the chapter I'm posting seems so far in the past compared to where I am at present. It's fun. _

_Anyway, thanks for all the amazing feedback. Enjoy this chapter and hopefully soon my muse will stop being such a fickle little bastard and return to me. _

"Do you remember the birthday party Aaron threw for you?" she asked, and her voice was too soft. He wanted to hear it loud and full of life. Sarcastic like she'd always been. But it was soft and wistful.

Still, the memory was good. "The one that was three months late?"

"Yeah," she breathed, drawing out the word. "Back when we were still secret, and then we weren't." Her chuckle was tired but genuine, happy in the recollection. He wished he had always made her happy.

"We should never have been a secret."

"It only worked because we were secret," she replied, and it sounded childlike in her tiredness. "I think you grew quite attached to me in those couple weeks of limbo. Otherwise, I don't know if we'd have lasted through an outing."

"We still didn't." He didn't mean to say it. He didn't want to bring her down. It just hurt still, if only a little. She didn't answer and he hated himself. This wasn't what she needed. No wonder she'd always called him as a jackass. "Veronica, I didn't—"

"I'm sorry." She sounded broken, like the scared little kid she had never been.

"Please don't be."

"I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I thought you killed her. I'm sorry I didn't stay with you when you were so angry and upset last summer." A little whimper bled through the phone lines, and he wanted to hold her so badly. "I should have stayed with you. I should have—"

"Veronica, stop. Let it go; I have. Really, I have. Please don't cry."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to." She sniffed, laughing and crying at herself. "My head's just all over the place. What I wanted to tell you was that that day—when you took my hand in front of all those people who hated me and told Dick where to shove it—that was one of the best feelings I've ever had."

He smiled. "Like I said, I should never have kept you a secret. I should have—" He cut himself off, too conscious of her father sitting next to him to say all the things he should have done. With her. For her. To her.

"I know," she told him, laughing a little. She understood his predicament. But she knew anyway—even if, for once, he couldn't say it. "And yes, you should have."

He laughed too, that deep throaty laugh that he hoped made her smile. And then silence—a deep, lovely silence that they hadn't shared in so long.

"How's the motel guy?" she asked suddenly, and his heart stopped. "Did Dad get to him in time?"

He was tempted to lie to her, to tell her that the boy was fine and recovering well in a hospital in San Marcos. It would be so easy. He wanted the moment to last. But then what would happen when she found out about the murder rap? She would know he was lying about either Wallace or the clerk, and would probably assume it was Wallace. Why would he be so desperate to lie about some stranger? He wouldn't.

So she'd assume it was Wallace and lose what strength she'd reserved thus far. It would break her, and a broken Veronica was one thing they couldn't afford.

"I'm sorry, Veronica," he said quickly, eager to avoid the 'what ifs' in his imagination. "He didn't make it."

He heard her throat catch on a sharp intake of air. A strangled sob. A whispered apology he knew probably wasn't directed at him. He wished he had lied. Or made Keith tell her.

"Was it…I mean, did…" He waited patiently for her to get her thoughts together, wishing he could have saved the guy if only to make her voice stop shaking that way. "Was he in a lot of pain?" she asked finally.

"No," he blurted out the lie without hesitation, thinking that it was the least he could do. Mac hadn't said anything about how long the kid had lasted, how long he was awake and afraid and in pain. But he couldn't—he wouldn't—tell her that. "He was unconscious by the time Keith got there. He just fell asleep and never woke up."

He heard her sniffle, as if pulling herself together. She had always tried to be the brave one. "Okay. At least I won't have that on my conscience."

"Your conscience? How was that kid's death remotely your fault?"

It came out a whisper, barely audible through the cell phone reception. "He died because he was trying to help me."

He wanted to take her pain and swallow it, let it be bitter in his stomach. She didn't deserve it. Lucky's actions were no more her fault than it was a wife's fault her husband drank. She was just the excuse. But then, it wasn't completely Lucky's fault either.

"It's not your fault, Veronica." He didn't know if Keith wanted her to know or not, but it didn't matter. She had to know. "We found out why Lucky snapped."

The line was silent for almost a minute, and he wondered if she would want that knowledge rolling around in her head. But then the telepathy she'd so perfected jumped in again. "It's Goodman, isn't it?"

Always three steps ahead, his girl. "We found a blackmail recording in Woody's e-mail of two boys from his old little league team talking about what he'd done to them. That he was a pervert. We think he molested Lucky when he was a batboy."

"And when Woody won for mayor, Lucky started to lose it." She didn't seem surprised, and that seemed like a sad thing. No eighteen-year-old girl should be so jaded.

"There's more, Veronica." And he wished there weren't. "The two boys on the tape, they were on the bus that crashed. Marcos and Peter."

That got a reaction and he was almost glad for it. She gasped and gave a little yelp, shakable after all. "Woody set up the crash."

"Maybe. Probably. He's one of two leads right now."

"But he'll run!" she screeched, and suddenly she seemed way too shakable. The smooth ice in her voice melted to sheer panic, strained tight his nerves. It was way too unfamiliar. Unshakable had felt better.

"It's alright," he assured her, motioning with his hands though he knew she couldn't see it. Maybe he was reassuring himself for good measure. Keith was looking at him strangely, asking him what was wrong, and he motioned to him too. "He's in jail. We've got him. Mac's just looking into the other kids who were on Woody's team. She doesn't think the person who was cut out of the recording was Lucky. Could be a better witness than two dead guys and a psychopath. And on the other hand, he could have caused the crash."

"This is all just too much." There was that strain again.

"Are you alright, Veronica?" When she didn't answer. "Veronica, talk to me?"

"I'm just so tired," she said softly, broken.

Staring out into the lonely, black darkness, he concentrated on deep breaths. It hadn't been more than eight hours she'd been gone, but it was a hell of an eight hours. It was a lifetime in eight hours, and all he wanted was for it to end. He wanted to kiss her and know he'd be able to do it again. He wanted to make all her pain go away. He wanted to hold her and make sure she was alright because he couldn't lose another one. He had lost two women in his life and both had directly or indirectly chosen their ends. Veronica wasn't selfish the way they were. She'd done this out of love. And now she was just about worn thin from it.

"Get some sleep, Veronica," he whispered, already mourning the loss of her voice. "We'll be there as soon as we can."

"I love you." He knew she meant it as a reassurance, but there was still that edge in her voice. The one that told him she was scared out of her mind and wanted only to be somewhere else. Somewhere safe. He could relate. He wanted the same thing for her.

"I love you too."

* * *

She closed the phone and took a deep breath. The battery display read one bar. Wouldn't last more than twenty minute. Probably less. If they didn't get there by then…well, a dead phone couldn't be traced. No more phone-a-friend.

It would have kept her awake, the thought of being at the whim of a cell phone battery. Cheap little thing, too. Given the option, she would have kept the thing clamped against her ear, listening to the sound of Logan's breathing, if nothing else.

But she was so damned tired.

Another twenty minutes of this and she'd lose her mind. Or worse, that sleeping pill would wear off and Lucky would be out for blood.

So she wrapped her arms around her knees and rested back against the wall. She didn't feel the hard ground beneath her or the rocks poking in her back. Tired beyond pain or fear, she leaned her head on her folded knees. Within seconds, she was out.

* * *

"Where are you?" Mac asked, and Keith could hear the keys clicking on the other end even before he answered. Always two steps ahead, that girl.

"We just turned onto Old Kane Springs. How far out is she?"

The road in front of him was empty. Any minute now, a tumbleweed would roll by. But for all the tension in the car, it could have been LA traffic during a movie premiere. Keith hunched over the wheel, looking everywhere at once as if the world would suddenly disappear if he didn't take it all in. Logan stared out the window, passing his cell phone from hand to hand as if willing it to ring when they both knew it wouldn't.

A few more keystrokes and a sigh that made him nervous. "In a straight shot, it's only about four miles, but you've got a lot of crap thrown in your way…including a network of rivers and a bunch of rock formations."

His sigh matched hers, weary and anxious. Four freaking miles. Oh, if only he could fly. "So how do we get through?"

"Keep to the road until you get to the State Park road. Take that right until it dead-ends at a stream. You want to cross it and then go off-road southeast until you hit a second river. If it's any less than two miles, you've got the wrong river. You got that?"

Keith relayed the directions to Logan, who wrote them down on an old Wendy's napkin from the glove compartment. "Alright, what's next?"

Click, click, click. "She should be right around there, on the other side of that river. I'll call to direct you when you're getting close."

He couldn't believe it was that easy. Turn here, turn there, cross a few rivers and there she'd be…his little girl. Safe at last in his arms. He'd lock her in the apartment for the rest of her life.

_She scraped the pen across the page, signing her name as easily as if she were signing a love letter. And it was, in a way. It meant the world to him. _

"_What?" she asked at his silence, her smile somehow different in his eyes though exactly the same as it always had been. Ever since she was a little girl. His girl. "Was I supposed to sign in blood?"_

_He began to cry, telling her about the test. Confirming what he had hoped and prayed for, what he'd known deep down all along. She was all his, no question about it. She began to cry too, and threw herself into his arms. _

"_Yeah, you are!" She laughed into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly like she used to do when she was younger. When she was six years old and he spun her around in the living room. Always his little girl._

"Alright," he managed to cough out, swallowing the lump lodged permanently in his throat. "Call me if she moves."

"And you keep me informed," she replied, her excitement palpable in her voice.

"Will do."

* * *

"So are they going to find her?"

Mac looked at him, puzzled, and looked back at the computer. "Of course they'll find her. It's not even a question of _if_."

He nodded, looking over her shoulder at the screen. She could feel him there. Looking at her. Looking at the screen. Looking at her again. He'd been doing that since he had scared the crap out of her and then nonchalantly invited himself to stay. Why did he always have to be looking at her?

"What are you doing here, Cassidy?" she asked finally, closing the laptop in front of her. "I mean, I'm not complaining too loudly because this place gets kinda creepy alone at night with Veronica out there being psycho-bait, but didn't you say everything you needed to the last time we talked?"

He had the good sense to look down at the floor. "Yeah, about that…"

She turned in her chair, facing him fully. He deserved the full-on frontal attack. Every bit of discomfort was his own damned fault. "I believe your exact words were, 'Good luck getting laid.' Am I right?"

"I didn't…" He looked up at her, eyes all bashful the way she'd always thought was cute. "I mean, I was a total—"

"Dick?" she filled in tersely, emphasizing the word as much as possible. His eyes widened almost comically and she knew she'd hit the mark. Yeah, he knew exactly what—or rather who—she'd meant.

"I shouldn't have said it. Really." He didn't say he was sorry. And it was deliberate; she could tell. She didn't think she'd ever heard him really apologize for himself, only for his brother. Maybe that was just the way he was.

"No," she sighed, her resolve crumbling. "You really shouldn't have. But I guess I can just make you pay for it later." There was that smile she'd missed so much. The half-laughing smile, bashful from years of being the younger brother. A little sad from years of being the ignored one.

"I can live with that." He sat down next to her and looked over her shoulder again, not nearly so annoying anymore. "So what are you doing now?"

"Investigating Woody Goodman."

His smile disappeared.

She wondered why.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Warning: This A/N contains slight SPOILERS for tonight's ep_

_So, tonight's ep scared the living mother-loving out of me, so I decided to wind down with a little LISM chapter. Really, I thought my heart was going to stop, and the look on Logan's face when he found her and saw the hair killed me even more (though that was more relieved tinglies). So this is my reward for not having a heart attack, and your reward for the amazing reviews. Thanks much, and enjoy._

As soon as they turned onto the state park road, the street lamps began to come fewer and farther between. The park was open to campers, but this wasn't the popular season, and their road was one less traveled. Keith sat on his side of the car, he on his, and the air between them vibrated with tense silence. If someone didn't speak soon, Logan thought his sanity might be lost to the unspoken fears.

"She's okay," he said finally, just to get it out in the open. When Veronica had been on the phone, Keith hadn't asked, only listened as patiently as could be expected to Logan's side of the conversation. Even after they'd hung up, he hadn't said a word about it. Logan got the feeling he was afraid to. He'd never known the man to be a stoic. "She's sleeping."

"I heard."

Another ear-bleeding silence.

"She's a little worse for wear, but she said she's basically fine. I'm not sure I believe her…" He probably shouldn't have added that.

"He hit her." It wasn't a question. He'd heard.

"A couple of times, but she said she's okay."

Keith looked at him a moment, just a moment before turning back to the unpredictable road. "You know she's not."

He couldn't call the way his lips curled a smile. More like an acknowledging grimace. "Yeah, I know."

It was strange, sitting there with the father of his ex-girlfriend-turned-damsel-in-distress-turned-God-knew-what-by-the-end-of-all-this. The last time they'd met Logan had been burning the tapes of his old man's indiscretions, an issue that he didn't even want to think of just then. Before that, their most significant interaction was even more cataclysmic.

_The last straw had come and gone what seemed like years before. His first love. His mother. His father. His innocence. Too many casualties had been laid bare that summer, and now she was becoming one of them. She was making herself one of them. _

"_You think I'm having fun?"_

_The lamp next to him was broken and part of him wondered how, but his hands were shaking from the pressure he'd release on its tacky ceramic weight. Part of him wanted to beat it to dust._

_She stared at him, afraid, and he didn't want her to be, but that same part of him liked the way her eyes widened, the way she gasped and gave him that power. He wanted to scare her because he was hurt and scared in his own rite. Without her what would keep him from self-destruction? _

"_Answer me, okay? Just tell me the—" The rest was swallowed whole as his cheek met the wall. Cheap, tacky paint. His mother would have had a field day redecorating the place. _

"_You don't talk to my daughter that way." And he knew he shouldn't have, but that part still liked the taste of her fear. "You're leaving now and you're never coming back."_

_It took him months after that door was dead-bolted pointedly behind him to realize that that part of him—that was his father._

"She's strong," he whispered, staring out the window at the vague shapes rushing past. "If anyone can fight her way through this, you know she can."

Keith rolled his shoulders, shifted in his seat. Angry. Terrified. Same damned thing. "She shouldn't have to be strong. She should be at home with Wallace talking about graduation and college and Stanford. She got into Stanford, you know?"

He smiled a little at the pride in Keith's voice. "Yeah, I heard."

"I should have never let her start this investigating thing again. She had her nice, normal job at the Hut. Why did I pull her back into all this danger?"

"You didn't pull her into anything," he reasoned, though Keith didn't seem to want consoling. "She loved being spy-girl, and she would have done it with or without you. In fact, she usually did." Keith gave him a look, as if to say, _You're not helping_, and he promptly backtracked. "What I'm saying is that this isn't your fault. I'll tell you what I told her: This is on Lucky, and this is on Woody. The rest of us are innocent bystanders in all this crap."

"Innocent or not, I'm still her father and I should have kept her out of this."

Logan knew there was nothing else he could say to soothe the man, so he turned his eyes back to the landscape outside the windshield. "Hey, is that the first river?"

* * *

"I've got something for you."

His first words when she picked up the phone, and Mac smiled. "Why, Deputy Zurek, you sure do know what to say to a lady." The deputy laughed and Cassidy gave her a strange look. She smiled again to appease them both. "What do you have?"

"We finished doing a sweep of Woody's house and grounds. There was a bomb found under his car, the same kind of bomb that was used in the bus crash."

"What?" If it was the same kind of bomb, the same person who planted it, then the logical conclusion had to be… "You're saying that Woody definitely didn't set up the bus crash."

"What?" Cassidy chimed in, but she ignored him.

"That's what it looks like, Mac. I mean, the wife and kids don't use his car, so it couldn't have been meant for them, so unless he has a remarkable copycat or was planning a dramatic suicide, I don't think it was him."

"Then we're left with the missing voice," she sighed, and Cassidy tapped her on the shoulder. She waved him away. "I've got three fourths of the kids on Woody's team identified. No matches to the French class roster, but there are still three people I haven't found. It shouldn't take me—wait! What are you…?"

She sputtered, turning in her chair as Cassidy jerked the phone from her hand and hung it up. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

Her chair fell back as she stood and stared him down. "What's going on is you just hung up on the only person who can help me solve this case!" Six hours of anger, frustration, and fear exploded from her more violently than she ever expected. This was not the normal Cindy MacKenzie. Not even close. "Now either get out of my way or, God help me, I'll move you!"

The look on his face spelled fear in six languages as he stepped away from her and the phone both. "I'm sorry. I just…I just wanted to know what's happening with the case. You haven't really told me anything. I mean, Woody Goodman did something and there's a missing voice and the bomb on the bus, and none of that spells Veronica to me, so…"

Her face softened, just a little. Her voice was terse but not altogether hostile when she answered, "When I get all the information from the nice deputy you just hung up on, then maybe we'll talk."

"Okay."

Somehow, she didn't like the way he answered, short and succinct and utterly intimidated. She hadn't meant to intimidate him—only to get him to back off a little. Intimidated, wounded, was not what she'd wanted at all.

But there were more important things. Veronica things. Woody Goodman things. And Deputy Zurek, who was probably wondering what had happened.

"Thanks," she nodded as she picked up the phone and dialed the Sheriff's Department.

* * *

Veronica awoke to complete darkness and momentarily forgot what was happening. Where she was. Her tailbone ached from sitting on stone and the rest of her stung with sand, but the utter blankness of her mind gave her those few delicious moments of ignorance.

And then it came back and she began to panic.

"Hello?" she shrieked into the phone before remembering that they'd hung up. Save on battery. They could still trace it as long as it was on. But the absence of Logan's voice left her hollow and scared. What if something had happened? What if Lucky had found her? He would never have known.

The phone read one bar and it had been that way since before she'd fallen asleep. Soon it would start to beep, lose signal, power off. She'd slept for thirty minutes, just long enough for her dad to be somewhere close and for Lucky to possibly have woken. She didn't have a choice. She had to call if she was going to step out in the open.

Keith picked up on the first ring and her name was the first word off his lips.

"It's me," she smiled. They'd talked only hours before, back at the Mobil, but it seemed so long ago. A few miles. A sunset. A few bruises. "How you doing, Dad? You hanging in there?"

"Me?" His voice was thick, the way it always was when he cried. Or was trying not to. Thicker then. "Are you kidding me? I'm cool as a cucumber." A sniff. A little laugh.

"Where are you?" She crept to the hole of her hiding place, padding on her fingertips to avoid her scraped palms, and looked out.

"We're coming, Sweetie. We'd be there by now if it wasn't so damn dark."

"How will I know you? How will you know how to find me?"

"Your friend Mac hacked into the police's cell trace. I don't know how and, as a former officer of the law, I don't want to know. I just know she's got both our coordinates on a screen and she'll tell us when we start to get close."

She drew a deep, steadying breath and leaned against the wall. The world outside her little crevice was completely black save the moonlight, and every creepy horror flick she'd ever seen flashed through her mind. The ever-infamous phrase _No one to hear the screams_ replayed itself in stereo surround sound inside her head. But she wouldn't panic. Her little catnap, short as it was, had steadied her a little. Even more steadying was the fact that there was no sign of Lucky's headlights out there in the black.

"What direction are you coming from?" she asked, transitioning smoothly into practical mode.

"North. According to Mac, we'll end up across a river from you. Do you see the river?"

She smiled, relieved by something as inconsequential as the mention of a familiar landmark. "Yeah, I'm right next to it. There's a wall of rock—it'll be on your right—and I'm inside this little crevice."

"Can you get to the other side of the river?"

"It's not that deep, but it's freezing. I don't want to go through it until I have to. Besides, I don't know if I'll have a place to hide on that side. I don't want to be caught out in the open."

Her dad sighed, and she wanted to cry at the familiarity of it.

_Just another average school night and she and Wallace were stuffing envelope after envelope with fake scholarship reward letters. What kind of parents still named their son John Smith?_

"_Keith Mars," her dad introduced himself to her only real friend. Still, Miss James had no idea what she was talking about. She wasn't antisocial. "Well, hello Wallace. Now what's going on here?"_

"_Helping a kid at school locate his deadbeat dad, the somewhat inconveniently named John Smith," she replied, facing him with a bit of self-assurance. She loved being a chip off his block. "But I've narrowed the field down to 440 John Smiths. So I'm sending each of them a letter addressed to his son congratulating him on his scholarship and I figure if our John Smith has any conscience at all, he'll see the name of his son, open the letter and call to say he's got the wrong address."_

_He faced her, holding back his laughter with a sigh. "Part of me is proud… and let's just leave it at that."_

_Her wide grin matched his. She was her father's daughter._

"When I hit the river, you should see my headlights," he said, thinking aloud more than anything. "It would be better if I could go without them so I don't draw Lucky's attention, but it's impossible out here. Anyway, don't show yourself unless you see me flash my headlights three times, alright? Otherwise, it's not me."

"I got it, Dad. Trust me; I'm not going out there unless I know it's you."

His voice was soft, worried, but steadfast. It shook a little from the jostle of the car (at least that was the reason she told herself), but for the most part it was steady, strong. "Tell me the truth, honey. Are you okay?"

"The nap helped," she replied, and the evasiveness was probably well-noted. "Just get here soon, okay?"

"Veronica," she could hear the warning in his voice, the helpless trying to find some wisp of control, "don't shield me. I'm going to find out sooner or later. Just tell me, are you bleeding profusely from anywhere? Did Lucky…" the words seemed difficult and she knew what he was asking. "…did he make you do anything you didn't want to do?"

"There's no profuse bleeding, and Lucky hasn't made me do anything," then a little laugh, "besides, you know, forcing me into a truck and driving me across the state."

The sound of his breath slowed over the receiver, calming just a little.

And then the phone beeped.

_A/N: Yeah, I know. Cliffies are a bitch and you hate me. But if I get an extra burst of inspiration and my muse stops being such a dick (because my muse, it seems, is male), then I'll try to get the next chapter out before the two-week mark. Thanks guys. _


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Alright, so I know I said less than two weeks. Sorry. I'm cutting that promise a little close, aren't I? I got a lot of frustrated reviews, and a couple that seemed pretty angry. But with the holiday I haven't had time to write, so please forgive me. Or at least read the chapter. _

"Veronica," Keith said, louder than only moments before, and Logan looked up with Lucky in his mind. "Veronica, I'm starting to lose you!"

"Keith," he tried to interject, but the man wasn't listening. "Keith, what's going on?"

"Three times, Veronica!" he practically yelled. "I'll blink my headlights three times! I—"

Keith went silent. His face was dead still, illuminated faintly by the dash lights.

"What happened?"

He dropped the phone into Logan's lap and Logan waited, that heart attack feeling creeping up on him again.

"Her battery died."

It took a second to think, to even register a reaction. Her phone battery died. No more conversations. No more chances. No more trace. Holy shit, no more trace.

_The first time he lost hope that his mother was alive, he felt like drowning himself in a bottle of the strongest tequila he could find. But then she'd come after him, spouting new hope and a chance to prove the photographic evidence wrong. He'd bit, chewed, and swallowed without a fleeting doubt. _

_The second time he lost hope, staring after a sister playing dress-up, he knew there was no alcohol strong enough. He'd have to follow her off the bridge to take away that cold, burning ache in his heart. He'd have to die, and part of him couldn't wait to do it. If only he damned legs would take him that far. _

_He made it two steps before they turned on him, too wobbly and weak to carry out their mission. _

_It was Veronica, again, who saved him from despair. She pulled his head to her chest, shushing him and letting him cry like he hadn't let himself in years. Holding him up when his damned treacherous legs wouldn't. He didn't ask for a reason for her kindness, her discretion; he only let himself take comfort in as much as she could give. Later, when his heart didn't ache so much and he no longer needed her arms to carry him, he'd let himself embellish her motives. He'd tell himself she owed him that and go back to hating her. _

_Of course, he'd never really been able to._

"You can't trace a dead phone, Keith," he said with far too calm a tone. He didn't understand why he hadn't screamed it. "What do we do now?"

"It's fine." Keith's voice held more anxiety than his, making his words a comical paradox. "She's not going to move until she sees us. We won't need the trace."

"But what if Lucky finds her?" There it was. Panic. They were becoming fast friends. "She'll have to run then. Or what if he gets her back in that car?"

"Logan," Keith said, his tone so serious that Logan had to listen. "That's my little girl out there, so could you please shut up?"

For once, he had absolutely no problem with that.

* * *

"The trace is gone," Mac gasped, trying not to lose it. Veronica wouldn't lose it. _Think, damnit, think_. "I don't have it; Deputy Zurek doesn't have it. Where did it go, Keith? Did she call you back? Do you know what's going on?"

"Breathe, Mac," came a simultaneous order from the man on the phone and the boy sitting next to her.

"Don't tell me to breathe! What happened?"

"She's fine," Keith assured her. "Her phone died but she's not going to move until we come and get her. Just tell me how far we are from her last known coordinates."

She tapped a few keys, and took a deep breath. "Uh, you're almost there. Just, uh," another deep breath, "just keep going southeast. You should hit the river in a few minutes. Five maybe, if you're driving slow. You should come up right across from her."

Just then the office call-waiting beeped.

"Hold on, Keith. Someone's on the other line." Clicking over, she answered in a breathless sigh. "Mars Investigations. This had better be good."

"It's me, Wallace," the familiar voice answered. "You guys got her yet?"

"Not yet, but soon," she promised. "Keith's not five minutes away. You'll be my first call after the police."

She could hear his disappointment in the way he said "Okay." Somehow he seemed weaker, but she didn't want to ask. He had had the second longest day of all of them, and he'd been unconscious for part of it.

"It shouldn't be long," she assured him again, wishing she had something else to say. She'd been saying that for too long. "Look, Keith's on the other end so I should go."

"Alright." She could hear the nod in his voice, the way his words moved in and out with his exhaustion. "I'll talk to you soon, then."

"Yeah, soon." She pushed a smile. It had to be soon. "Later." Clicking over, she tried to switch back to business. "Keith, you there?"

"Still here."

"That was Wallace," she explained. "He was just calling to check in. I told him—" Another beep broke her train of thought. "Keith?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you hold on again? Wallace probably forgot something."

"Yeah, sure," he replied, and she could hear a faint smile in it.

She clicked over. "Wallace?"

"Not quite," Weevil's voice greeted her. "Where am I?"

A bubble of nervous laughter escaped her throat, and Cassidy shifted beside her. She didn't like his quietness. "I give up. Where are you?"

"Limited patience here, Mac. I'm heading into the park. Just do whatever you do and tell me how to get to Veronica."

"It's gonna take a couple minutes," she huffed, her own patience wearing dangerously close to meltdown. "I can't just click my heels and get a trace on your phone. I have to break a few laws first and that'll take me a minute or two. First I need your phone information."

She took it down and promised to call him back before clicking back to Keith. "You still there?"

"Yeah."

"Good, cause I gotta go."

"What?"

She laughed again, almost a giggle. The part of her that was very tired just couldn't stop laughing. "Just keep going the way you're going until you reach the river. I'll call you back if you get off track. You call me when you find her. Right now I have to do a couple things you don't want to know about, so I'm going to go do that and I'll talk to you soon."

She hung up before he could answer, afraid of what he would say. She'd probably hear about it later, but in the mean time there was a lost biker to magically find. Seemed like the Woody issue would have to wait.

* * *

Keith was just about going blind from staring through the windshield. He didn't want to risk using his brights in case Lucky was somewhere around, but the dim of his running lights were nothing against the hollow, black landscape in front of him. Following roads would be difficult enough, but he didn't even have roads. Zigging and zagging over uneven ground, any minute he expected to run full speed over the edge a cliff.

"Whoa, slow down. Stop," Logan's voice was a surprise in the quiet. They hadn't spoken since he'd told the boy to shut up. Now he was strung so tight that it made him jump. "Keith, do you see that?"

He looked up ahead where Logan was pointing, and in the glow of the headlights he could just make out some sort of drop-off in the otherwise empty canvas. From the crack he could see something moving—a dim, shifting flicker like light reflecting off a mirror. In that moment it seemed like his salvation. The river.

_When Veronica was fourteen, she was almost kidnapped. Or killed. He didn't wish to know which._

_He was the sheriff and she was his daughter, not quite as innocent as she'd once been but far too naïve for her own good. She liked to hang out in the sheriff's station and watch the general goings on, the villains and the heroes as they interacted. She liked knowing that her father was one of the good guys. _

_She was there when he brought in Gary Zarate, a local dealer who now swore vengeance on everyone and anyone involved. She'd brought him breakfast and kissed him on the forehead while Zarate watched from booking. When he somehow escaped three hours later, Veronica and his wife were the only ones Keith thought of. _

_And when Zarate was caught a block from the school, he wasn't naïve enough to think the man wouldn't have carried through on his threats._

_Later, when she asked about his day, he didn't say a word._

He looked at Logan and Logan looked back at him, and for a second they didn't know what to do. Less than a hundred yards ahead lay the only thing standing between them and the girl both had secretly thought they'd never see again. It seemed surreal, like if they moved an inch, took a breath, it would turn into a mirage and disappear.

But, of course, to stand still would have been worse.

"Here we go," Keith whispered, easing off the brake and rolling anxiously towards the river.

* * *

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound," she sang quietly to herself, "that saved a wretch like me."

The words echoed softly through the cavern, coming back to her hollow. She remembered hearing the song at Lilly's funeral, sung by a choir with all the pomp and circumstance that Kane money afforded. Still, it had been a small sort of comfort; this time it just filled the silence. It was hard to keep it together with agonizing impatience making her legs shake. She almost wished for merciful unconsciousness again.

"I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see."

At least twice a minute, she thought she saw lights in the darkness across the river. Each time, it was a trick of moonlight on the water, or just her imagination. Mostly her imagination. It seemed like days since she'd seen a familiar face besides Lucky's, and yet it was only that morning she'd been studying for finals and telling Wallace to please gloat somewhere else.

Oh god. Wallace. She wanted so badly to see him again.

She promised herself that if she got out of this, she would call him first thing. She would tell him that she loved him and that he was the best friend could ask for. She would make sure he didn't blame himself. Then she would kick his ass for getting shot and scaring her half to death.

Well, maybe they were pretty even on that front.

A flicker of light caught her eye from the river, and she watched it with half expectation, half jaded mistrust. She was getting really tired of the letdown. But the flicker grew brighter and didn't quaver so much. Soon it shaped into a solid beam, and then two. With excruciating sloth, it settled into the distinct shape of headlights on the far bank.

She held her breath and prayed it wasn't Lucky. How would he know how to find her? Besides, he wouldn't come from that direction. Would he? Still, the very possibility made her breath catch.

Then there it was. Once…twice…three flashes of blinding white light, and she started to cry.

The doors opened, illuminating the inside, and her two favorite men stepped out into the darkness.

"Veronica!" Her father yelled, and she realized she hadn't moved. With all the grace of a drunk hippopotamus, she stumbled from her crevice and into the beam of the headlights. "Veronica!"

"Daddy!" she screeched, the words catching on a sob. "I'm here, Daddy! Daddy, I'm here!"

Their alarmed curses reminded her of how she probably looked. She took a moment to feel self-conscious, to put a hand to her swollen jaw and hate Lucky for breaking her that little bit. But the distress was gone in a second, and she could think of nothing but getting across that river, into that car, into their arms.

"Are you okay?" Logan asked as she limped down the embankment. She looked up at him, and even with the backlight, his expression said it all. Stupid question.

Keith slid down on the embankment on the other side, sloshing a few feet into the water before the cold hit him and he jumped. "Are you freaking kidding me? You're not wading through this!"

"What?" She just wanted to be on the other side. She didn't have the energy to look for a bridge.

"You'll catch pneumonia," he said, shaking his head with his ankles still soaking up hypothermia. "I'll carry you across."

Before she could object, he was thigh deep in ice-cold water and halfway across the river. Really, it was less than 15 yards from one side to the other and would barely reach her waist. But if he wanted to carry her, she was not in the condition or position to say no.

She would have thrown herself into his arms, had she the energy. It would have been a beautiful moment—melodramatic in all the right ways—but with her whole body shaking with cold and hunger and relief, she couldn't find the gusto to propel herself forward.

So he swept her up in his arms and held her to him with strength enough for the both of them.

"I love you," he whispered in her ear, and then repeated it until he shook with sobs she wished she hadn't caused. She buried her head in his neck and let him be her rock again. It seemed like so long. So long.

"Uh, guys," Logan's voice broke into the moment, and for a moment she tried to be annoyed. It didn't work. "I hate to interrupt, but a) I want to get in on the action, and b) shouldn't we be getting the hell out of here?"

The boy did make an excellent point.

"Yeah," she whispered, still reluctant to trust happiness. It had been such a fair-weather friend of late. Still, things were starting to look up. "Let's go home."

He smiled and kissed her forehead, flinching at her bruises and then smiling again.

Again, the river was less than 15 yards across. Forty-five feet at the most. The headlights of the car barely kissed the water, illuminating them in a shadowy half-light. She kept her head down, smelling his sweat and aftershave, surreally familiar after so traumatic an absence. He kept whispering to her, those empty reassurances that people use after someone's died. _It's okay. You'll be alright. Just one step at a time. _

She counted his steps as he waded through more slowly than before. A few times, her butt touched water and he jerked as if he'd hurt her. _Nineteen…Twenty …Twenty-one. _

Somewhere around the halfway mark, a blinding light hit her father's back her father's back and he let out a choked gasp. Logan yelled something in a strange sort of voice that she didn't like. She wanted to look up, to ask what was wrong, but Keith tucked her head against her chest again and picked up his pace. There was a sound she didn't recognize, then recognized too well, and her father's gasp changed to a groan.

And then she dropped underwater.

_A/N: And now you hate me again. I know! I hate me too for this ending, but that's how the word count worked and there are no good, happy places to break in the next couple chapters. But here's the deal: One week. I promise I'll update in one week. But finals are coming up and this week is crazy. Next week is worse. The week after is finals week, and God knows I don't have the time to write during any of the above. But since I know this story is driving you all to padded walls, I'll find the time. So please don't beg for more. It's coming. _


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: Okay, apparently with my last update I killed four people, incited at least two to murder, and was called both a hoe and Evil Incarnate. You guys crack me up hardcore. Plus, I love you all because I broke 300 reviews with the last chapter. Sweet. So here's the next one. Hope you enjoy it. _

One moment he was watching Keith wade through the water holding the love of his life. The next, he was blinded by headlights from a car he hadn't known was there. It took less than half a second to figure out who it had to be.

"Keith, it's Lucky!" he yelled, and the look on Keith's face was pure terror. His gun was in his holster, his daughter in his arms. If he went for one, the other would drop.

In that moment's hesitation, Lucky opened the door and fired with the precise aim of an army man. Keith went down, and so did Veronica.

For a second, he didn't know who was hit, and the thought of Veronica's blood in that water propelled him forward down the embankment. But Veronica surfaced with a gasp; Keith didn't. He merely bobbed, his head facedown as if he were bobbing for apples, before he disappeared completely.

"Daddy?" Veronica whispered as Logan jumped headlong into the water. Her eyes were fixed on the spot where he'd been. "Daddy!"

Even in the dim of the headlights overhead, Logan could see the water turning dingy and rose-colored in spots where it shouldn't have been. Veronica seemed stone-cold petrified, staring at the water. He had to snap her out of it.

The river was not even waist deep and had little current, so it only took less than a minute to find him. When Logan pulled Keith up, he was bleeding badly near his right shoulder blade and didn't seem to be breathing.

Veronica's voice came in hiccupping sobs, her feet still planted as Logan pulled Keith towards the shore. "Is he—?"

The question ended in a scream, and Logan glanced back into Lucky's dark, angry eyes. He had Veronica by the hair, that damnable gun pressed firmly against her temple.

"What do you think, Echolls?" he asked, pulling Veronica back towards the other bank. "I bet you never guessed I had it in me."

Logan looked at Veronica, her eyes wide and staring straight at her father. He was still bleeding. "Save him," she whispered over the pain.

He made a split-second decision. He turned away from her, pulling Keith to the shore and starting CPR. He'd never forgive himself for it.

By the time he looked back, Keith was breathing but Veronica and Lucky were only taillights.

* * *

Going somewhere around fifty, Weevil was pretty sure he was going to kill himself out there in the dark. Even had he not been on the phone with Mac, with the roads nonexistent and the fact that they were supposed to be looking for a river, he was pretty sure he was gonna end up at the bottom of one.

But Mac had said she'd be the first informed if they found her. So far, that phone call hadn't come and Keith's blinking dot had already stopped at the same place Veronica's dot had stopped blinking. And apparently his blinking dot was coming up on Keith's, which for some reason hadn't moved in five minutes. Didn't seem like a good omen.

When a pair of headlights appeared behind him, he figured that probably wasn't good either. One flash of police lights and he swore like a sailor in a squall. Some of the boys started to slow up as if they might bolt.

"Either our boy Lucky has stolen himself a squad car, or our favorite sheriff has arrived to botch the job," he told Mac.

"Oh good," she replied, and he scoffed. "Hey, at least you've got people with guns backing you up."

He smiled a wry smile he was sure she heard. "Considering who it is, in what way is that supposed to be comforting?"

"Good point," she conceded. "Just keep driving. They can follow you to Veronica. You're almost there."

"Peachy." He checked his mirror again. "Hey Mac, why's there an ambulance tailing Lamb?"

"It's probably just a precaution," she replied, but there was a long pause afterward. "I'm going to call Deputy Zurick on my cell and make sure everything's alright. Talk to Beaver."

"What?"

There was no answer, just a nervous sounding boy on the other end. "Uh, hello?"

"Who's this?"

"It's, uh, Cassidy…Casablancas. Who is this?" The boy sounded like he was trying to find his guts somewhere in the bottom of his stomach. Wasn't quite working.

"Weevil." An intake of breath and something suspiciously like a scoff were his only answer. He didn't feel the need to say anything else. The voice, as well as the person from what he'd seen, screamed weakness. He wasn't going to be much help.

A moment later Mac came back, and her voice dripped panic. "Hurry up, Weevil."

"What's the deal?"

She didn't seem to want to answer. That made him nervous. When she did, it was in that teary way girls talk when they're trying to bullshit guys into thinking their tough. That made his foot a little heavier on the gas.

"The ambulance is for Keith. Lucky's got Veronica again."

He swore a blue streak, and then a red and a yellow for good measure. Freaking psycho janitor had to pick his school to shoot up, his girl to kidnap, and a freaking million acre national park to hide in. If he ever found him, Lucky was taking a fall off the side of the nearest cliff.

"How far are they?"

"Steer a little to your right," she replied, and he did so. And there, just beyond the range of his headlights, were the blinking hazard lights of Keith's car.

He smiled. Girl didn't disappoint. "Thanks Mac. We'll call you when we got her."

* * *

Mac was pretty sure she was making Beaver nervous. She had finished pacing about two minutes before and was back to the Goodman search, but he looked at her as if she would bite him. It was tempting to encourage the idea if only to amuse her frazzled nerves, but more than that she wanted comfort.

"Cassidy," she whispered, looking up at where he sat across the room, "come sit next to me."

He looked like he wanted to refuse but rose with only slight hesitation. He took the chair next to her and she took his hand, holding it for a few moments before the keyboard claimed hers back.

"So what's up with Goodman, exactly?" he asked, his nervousness ebbing just a little. "I've been catching bits and pieces, but I don't really get what's going on."

She debated how much to tell him, keeping her fingers busy on the keyboard to cover her hesitation. In all actuality, were she a real private investigator, all the interesting stuff would probably be deemed confidential. But she wasn't a P.I., and this was Cassidy. _Deep breath, MacKenzie._

"The long and short of it," she replied finally, "is that Woody Goodman is a pedophile who molested at least three kids on his little league team. Two of those kids were Marcos Oliveres and Peter Ferrer, who not-so-coincidentally both died in the bus crash. Woody, according to the evidence, didn't blow up the bus, so Deputy Zurick and I both believe that the third, unidentified victim blew up the bus to avoid being outted. This has very little to do with getting Veronica back besides the fact that Lucky snapped because he, too, was molested by Woody, but it keeps my hands busy and slows my agonizing decent into insanity."

She took another deep breath. Beaver just stared.

"So, did that clear things up for you?"

He was looking a little green. A little flustered. She figured he probably could have gone his whole life without knowing that information and been all the happier for it. Still, he'd asked.

"Yeah," he said finally, a little breathless. When he looked up at her, though, all traces of agitation were carefully hidden behind those stormy blue eyes. "Yeah, it did."

For a moment, she thought she saw something else in there. That something, she assumed, that Dick had seen the night of the Winter Carnival. Another person tucked deep down inside of him. It scared her a little.

"Are you alright, Cassidy?" she asked, looking back at the computer to shake the feeling.

"Yeah," he said, nodding his head and giving her that little smile she always liked. "I'll be fine."

* * *

"I know how you escaped; that was my mistake," he said, his voice low and dangerous. He was looking out the windshield into the night, but she could still feel the weight of his glare. "My question, Veronica, is how did they find us? There's no way they could have stumbled onto us out here."

She leaned away from him, pushing wet hair out of her eyes and trying so hard not to think of her father in that river. An unfamiliar panic was creeping up on her in the dark. It wasn't natural, the restriction in her chest. Cool had always been her middle name. And yet, if he didn't hear her heart racing in that silent little car, she couldn't understand why. She could swear people in Zimbabwe could hear it. "Maybe the park ranger spotted us and called it in."

"I didn't see any rangers, Veronica." She didn't like the way he kept saying her name. It was a warning, a threat. Deceptively quiet, it told her to tread carefully and watch for sharp turns.

Before she could open her mouth, stutter out another spontaneous excuse, he jerked the wheel and the car sailed around the side of a tall boulder. The headlights bounced with her stomach when the tires screeched to a halt, and the jolt threw her maliciously against her seatbelt.

"Out of the car!" he commanded, throwing open his door. When she didn't immediately follow suit, he marched around to her door and yanked it open. "Out!"

Coughing on a sob, she stumbled out onto her knees, grateful for the solid ground.

"Where's the bug, Veronica?" This time he screamed the name and she liked the threat better. "You're gonna tell me or I'm gonna slap you around until it jumps out on its own."

"I don't—" she started, but his foot met her stomach before the denial could pass her lips. "Please—"

With the second kick she went down hard, gasping and sobbing in turn. When her body hit the dirt, something crunched between them and she knew she was caught.

"Well, well, well." Lucky smiled that sickening sneer of his, and she hated him more than she'd ever hated anything. More than Lamb. More than the Fitzpatricks. Maybe even more than Aaron. Close freaking race. "It seems you really _can_ beat the truth out of someone." He pulled her up by her hair until she stood on gelatin legs, but she managed to stay upright and stumble a few feet away. "Take off your shirt."

Right. As if her day wasn't bad enough, now he wanted a show. Hell just kept digging itself deeper. "Here." She reached down the front of her shirt and pulled out the mangled, sopping wet little phone. It wasn't worth hiding. "I took it from the motel clerk. They traced the call I made at the Mobil." She threw it on the ground between them.

He walked closer, grinding the phone beneath his heels as he went, until he was almost in her face. "What do they know?"

Veronica debated what to say. Of course the police and her father didn't know much about where they were going; how could they when she wasn't privy? But he probably wouldn't accept that and her other option, though risky, might restore some cohesiveness to his fragmenting state of mind. _Tread softly, Veronica. Tread softly._

"They know about Woody," she replied as calmly as she could, and his entire stance petrified. "They have him in lockup already, Lucky. He's going to jail."

For a moment he was frozen there, stuck between shock and fear and probably about 12 other emotions she doubted she'd understand. And then it was gone, every bit of emotion in him. Even the anger. He was empty.

"What do you think you know about Woody, Veronica Mars?" he asked flatly, though there was a challenge buried deep down. "You know nothing. You think I was just a stupid kid who didn't know what was going on? That I was a _victim_?" He spit the word like venom in her face and she could almost read his thoughts. Victims were weak. "Goodman's a monster. He doesn't deserve jail. He doesn't even deserve a grave."

She looked him straight in the eyes and tried her damnedest not to flinch. "At least he won't hurt anyone else."

There was that sneer again and any fleeting sympathy she'd felt was torn from her. "I don't need you to save me from the big, bad wolf, Veronica. You're only alive until you get me over the border."

"Does that make you feel in control, Lucky?" She sighed a disgusted chuckle, staring straight back into his empty eyes. "It make you feel like a man to kick the shit out of a teenaged girl? To hold a gun and pull the trigger watch someone else bleed?" Her lip wanted to quiver, but she bit her cheek to stop it.

She stepped closer to him, closer than she'd ever wanted to be. But there was no point in running anymore. Her father had probably already bled to death. She didn't think Logan would leave him there alone to find her, but if he did she would hate him for it. No one was going to save her.

"Tell me, did you see Woody's face when you shot that boy and left him to die? When you shot my father?" She watched his face, watched it contort and twitch and felt a sick satisfaction in his pain. She wasn't strong enough to kill him, but she could damn well make him bleed. "I mean really, Lucky, do you know what they'll do to you in prison? Woody's got nothing on—"

She was on the ground in half a moment, spitting blood and laughing at him. He was going to kill her.

"They'll never let you over the border, Lucky," she taunted, pressing every button she could think of. "Our pictures are up at every crossing by now. The car model. The plates. The police are going to get you sooner or later, but that's not what you should be worried about." She watched his callous expression waver ever so slightly. There it was—fear, doubt, a little edge of panic. "Logan will be out here looking for me. Weevil, too. If you kill me now and one of them finds you, you'll never make it to the cops. They'll make you beg for the cops."

Her mind was so far gone, she barely felt it when he kicked her. And again. And again. She just kept laughing at him, a choked, taunting laughter that just made him kick harder. That was a rib. That would leave a mark. Maybe some internal bleeding for good measure.

She couldn't tell how long he kicked her before she passed out.

_A/N: Yes, I know. Hoe. Evil Incarnate. Lucifer's Painted Lady. Just throw them at me because I want to kick my own ass for ending it here. Unfortunately, again, that's how the word count divvied it up. _

_But the deal is the same as last time. One week, and I'll post another chapter. I have a hella-huge presentation due Thursday and next week is finals week, so there's no way on God's green earth I can get one out before then, so you'll have to suffer seven agonizing days. I will tell you, though, that next week's chapter will not end with nearly so much angst. So keep that in mind and (please) keep the reviews coming. _


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: Here you go. I thank you all for your patience and for not tracking me down and murdering me in my sleep. I thank you all _very_ much for that. But here it is, the long awaited next chapter. Now you can all stop dying, swearing, and holding your breath. Man, I love you guys. _

After making sure Keith made it safely into the ambulance, it took Logan and Weevil almost five minutes to find a place for them to cross in the Impala. Lamb had gone the opposite direction along the river. Silently Logan prayed they found Lucky before he did. The simple arrest Lamb could give him would be too merciful.

The landscape was not altogether wide open, but it was clear enough to make him think they should have been able to see the taillights easily. But there were no taillights. There were no headlights. There was nothing but blacks and dark grays and the tinted blue moonlight. He hadn't even gotten to touch her.

"So what's the story?" Weevil's voice was soft but, as always, rough around the edges. Trivially, Logan thought the car should have been blasting rap from some tripped out stereo system, the seats vibrating with the pulse of the music. But it wasn't. All was silent above the engine, and Weevil's quiet voice sounded like a scream.

"What do you mean?" he asked, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself. "Veronica…crazed maniac…obviously they gravitate towards each other." Somewhere in the back of his mind, he didn't know if he was being obtuse for Weevil's sake or his own.

"Figures," the other man grunted. "But you know I didn't mean that."

Logan took a deep breath, trying to weigh the least amount of disturbing information he could give while still satisfy his curiosity. "Well, Lucky snapped 'cause the mayor's a psycho pedophile, and Veronica decided to play Wonder Woman when Lucky pulled a gun at the school and shot her best friend."

Weevil pulled a face and stared at him for only a moment before turning back to the landscape. "That's messed up, dawg."

Logan let a small, wry smile creep across his lips. "You're not kidding."

There was that silence again. He was getting used to it out there in the desert. He felt like he'd been riding or driving for years.

"_What's that smile for?" she asked, curling against him on the couch. "Did I miss something funny?"_

_They were watching _Office Space_ at his place, popcorn and pizza spread messily over the coffee table, a table that had cost more than her apartment building. Since his father's arrest and his case's dismissal, she had taught him to look at the house differently. Somehow, having her there made the place seem inhabitable, like a home instead of a museum. She chased the old memories away with new ones._

_Tonight it was dinner-and-a-movie night, though he seemed to be watching her more than the movie. He'd seen it a million times before anyway. _

"_No, not really," he replied, trying to wipe his face clean of amusement. It didn't work. _

"_What?" she laughed, turning away from the screen so she could look him clear in the eyes. "Do I have something on my face? Popcorn in my teeth?" She gave him an exaggerated smile to display her pearly whites. "No? Then what, may I ask, are you smiling at?"_

_He chuckled, brushing his fingers down the side of her face before lowering his head for a deep, soul-searing kiss. "You're just so cute when you do impersonations."_

_She smiled up at him, eyes refocusing on his. Her voice was throaty and out of breath. "Very much noted."_

_He thought maybe he could live his whole life watching movies on that couch with her. _

"Do you think he's killed her?" he asked suddenly, hating himself and the question he couldn't help but air.

"I don't know." It wasn't the answer he wanted, but it was the one he'd been expecting. The man sitting next to him wasn't one to bullshit pretty lies.

"I get him first," he stated, his eyes deviating from the window to stare somewhere inside his mind. He wasn't a violent man, had tried so hard not to be since the truth about his father had shattered any remaining illusions he'd carried for the man. Still, he could see himself making Lucky bleed.

Weevil apparently wasn't going to argue the claim.

He felt the car slow before he noticed the absence of their headlights. When he looked up, all he saw was the pitch blackness of the desert and the soft glow of the dash lights on Weevil's face. And even those Weevil blocked out with an old rag from the backseat.

"What is it?" he asked in a whisper, unsure of why. The situation seemed to call for it.

"Up there." Only a quick tilt of Weevil's head showed a direction, and he squinted to see much of anything.

But there was a glow. The edge of a boulder stood illuminated by a hidden light, the desert floor behind it lit by that same focused source. It had to be headlights.

* * *

The first thing he noticed coming out of the black was the rumble of an engine underneath him. It seemed strange. The thought that flashed through his mind was that Veronica would miss school the next day, though he couldn't quite put it in context. The buzz of his alarm clock was a strangely rhythmic beep, but talk radio seemed to be cutting in.

"Sir," the radio announcer said. "Sir, can you hear me? Sir, I need you to squeeze my hand."

He squeezed his hand around…but the blanket felt rubbery—latex? He didn't remember any latex on his bed. Why was the bed moving?

"Sir?"

When Keith opened his eyes, nothing made sense. He was faced down, looking through a cushioned hole at some kind of dirty beige carpeting. He didn't know how he'd gotten that way or why he couldn't roll over. His head wouldn't move. But the room was still moving and…oh god…

"Where's my daughter?" he choked out, his throat thick with bile and blood.

"Sir, try not to talk," the woman sitting next to him insisted, her shoes shifting at the periphery of his vision. "You were shot once through the back into your right shoulder blade. The bullet is still inside, but we can't take care of that until we get to the hospital so you're going to have to sit tight."

"But my—"

"You've lost some blood, but you were lucky. The bullet hit bone and stopped. If it had gone through, it probably would have hit the lung."

"Lucky," he moaned, jolting with a cough and the pain that came with it. "Does he have—"

"Sir, please. You must stop talking. Take shallow breaths."

He really wanted to argue, but it wouldn't be much use. He was strapped to a gurney. There was no place to go.

The last thing he could remember was hearing Logan's shout and feeling the air ripped from his chest. Veronica had dropped. He had lost her. Lost her again.

_When she wasn't waiting outside in the parking lot, he knew she'd gone into the school after Gia. It wasn't surprising really; she wasn't the sit back and watch kind of girl. He hadn't raised her to be one. Times like these, he kicked himself for that. _

_Inside, it wasn't hard to find them; the school was pretty empty. A few teachers gathering their things. A few students mulling about. One tiny janitor's closet with a light peaking under the door. _

_He saw Veronica standing in front of Gia, shielding the girl's body with her own. He saw the ugly-looking knife in Lucky's hand as he stepped toward the two girls, menacing in a way even Gia couldn't misinterpret. His heart stopped and he jumped headlong into the fray. That's just what he did when his baby girl was in trouble. He knew no other way to be. _

_When the radio personality announced the hostage situation at the school, he'd had that same heart-stopping moment. And then again when her phone died, and again when she'd dropped into the water. But he swore, given the chance, he'd live every terrifying second a hundred times over if he could be sure she'd make it out alive._

"Just relax, Mr. Mars," said a male voice from his other side as the ambulance slowed. "We'll have you fixed up in no time."

At the moment, he wasn't sure he cared.

* * *

This time there were no precious moments wasted in stunned anticipation. Weevil didn't seem the wait and see type of guy. Before Logan could take a breath, Weevil had cut the engine and was out of the car walking towards the only light source they'd seen in miles. It was less than a hundred feet ahead and Logan just hoped Lucky hadn't seen their headlights. Against the man with a gun and the girl, the only thing they had going for them was the surprise.

"You got a plan?" he asked when he caught up, treading as lightly as he could and speaking so quietly that he barely heard it himself.

"Not really," Weevil replied. He couldn't see the man's face in the darkness, but his voice sounded tight, angry. Worried, he'd say. "I figure, maybe he'll go for me and you can get V out of there." There was a pause and a gruff chuckle. "On the other hand, maybe you should go first."

"Ha ha, Very funny, Paco."

It wasn't until they got closer that they started hearing voices—or rather a voice. Lucky's came through quite clearly, echoing over the sandy plane. Loud. Angry, Logan noted. But where was Veronica?

"Get up, you little bitch!" the man was bellowing as he and Weevil slowed to a stealthy trot. "Mars, damnit, I don't have time for this."

Screw the surprise. He knew nothing good could be implied in the situation by the words, "get up."

He rounded the corner at a run, Weevil half a step behind him. If his eyes hadn't immediately hit Veronica, somewhere close to dead on the ground not ten feet in front of him, he would have kept running. Despite Logan's claim, it was Weevil who hit Lucky in a flying tackle. Logan was still standing above his girl.

She was lying slightly curled on her back, half in the shadows outside the headlights' beam. He could see the blood on her face, sharply contrasted against her too-pale skin, and the yellowish-purple bruises starting where her shirt had slid up. There were scratches on every inch of her arms, deep and painful, and if she was breathing he couldn't tell.

"Veronica," he whispered as he leaned over her, as if he were just trying to wake her from a nap. "Veronica?"

There was yelling in the background as the two other men fought. From the sound of it, Weevil seemed to be winning. It didn't really concern him.

"Veronica, please." He choked back tears and touched her face. It was warm under his fingers. "Baby, can you hear me?"

She had a pulse, slow and steady, and he almost sighed with relief. But she was unconscious, and how she got that way made his stomach turn dangerously.

"Hey, how 'bout some help over here," Weevil's voice caught his attention, and he look up at the other men.

Weevil was trying to hold a flailing Lucky from behind. The gun sat only a few feet from him. It would have been so easy to pick it up and use it. Point and shoot, like the old arcade games he'd played as a child. One bullet and he'd land the top score. Put them all out of his misery.

But then he'd go to prison, self-defense or not. He'd spend the night in jail while Veronica woke up without her father, without her best friend, and without him. If she woke up. She had to wake up.

Leaving the gun where it was, he stood and walked to the pair. With one solid punch Lucky went out, Weevil let him drop, and the two men still standing walked back to Veronica.

"She gonna be alright?" Weevil asked, out of breath from the scuffle.

"I don't know," he sighed, tossing the other man his phone before kneeling down beside her again. "Veronica? Can you hear me?"

She didn't stir, didn't flutter an eyelash or move a finger. But her chest rose and fell with shallow, wheezing little breaths. As long as he saw that, he could live with himself.

"Where are they?" he asked when Weevil tapped his shoulder with his phone.

"Three minutes," Weevil replied, kneeling next to him. "Jesus, what did he do to her?"

"Nine hours," Logan whispered, barely holding onto the anger burning in his stomach. He had to remind himself again about prison. And his father. He wouldn't become his father. "She was with him for nine damn hours. He could have done anything."

He ran a hand up and down her arms, careful of her scraped elbows and raw wrists. The slightest pressure, he imagined, would break her. Still, the contact helped to ground him, kept him sane. Every mark burned into his memory like so many sins she had never committed. They weren't hers, but she might carry most of the marks the rest of her life.

The sirens were just beginning to break the silence when her fingers twitched. Her eyelashes fluttered and her lips formed a silent word he couldn't read. He let himself cry with relief.

* * *

Heaven felt nice in her dreams.

She knew it had to be a dream because Logan was there, rubbing her feet and feeding her chocolate covered cherries. Not even heaven could be that nice to her. Besides, if he was dead she would kick his astral ass.

"Don't make me leave," she whispered to him as he kissed her. His fingers felt so real as they mingled with hers, and she couldn't bear to let go.

If she had to go back to Lucky, she didn't think she'd have the strength to stay together. Her skin itched at the very idea of sitting in that car with him, listening to his off-key singing and his half-schizophrenic mumbling. Of course, considering she was close to death if not actually there, he had probably just left her in the desert for the bugs.

"You're not going anywhere," Logan told her, though his lips didn't move. She felt his fingers sweep across her cheek, though her eyes told her that both his hands were wrapped in hers against her chest.

"I'm so scared to wake up," she whimpered, resting her forehead against his neck.

Would he evaporate like a cloud? Walk away? Not look back? Would the dream just end, leaving her bloody and broken on the cold desert floor?

But heaven was so warm.

"It's okay, baby. Just open your eyes."

_Aw hell. Maybe dying won't take too long. _

When her green eyes opened, they met brown and she didn't miss heaven so much anymore.

_A/N: See, now wasn't that worth waiting for? And wasn't that a much better end than my previous cliffhangers? I told you all to be patient and I'd take care of you. I hope I followed through well enough for you. _

_That having been said, it's going to be a long while before the next chapter. This week is finals and then I'm heading up to see my mom and sisters for the first time in a year. I'm not going to spend my time with them writing, so it'll be the second week in January at the earliest and no amount of begging will change that. Sorry. But hopefully this last chapter will get you by. _


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: Again, thank you all for your unwavering patience (or not) and support. My holiday was amazing, thanks. And here it is, your next chapter. Enjoy. _

"It's you," she whispered, her voice a hoarse exhalation through cracked and bruised lips. She no longer tasted blood. "How is it you?"

Logan was sitting on the edge of her bed. A hospital bed, she noticed a moment later than she should have. Her investigative powers were so much more than off at the moment. She seemed to be sitting at an angle. Her chest didn't hurt as much as before, but that was probably morphine.

And Logan was crying silently.

"We found you, Veronica," he sighed something akin to absolute relief, leaning forward to wrap her in a careful, if awkward, embrace. He didn't seem to care. Neither, she noted, did she. "You were on the ground and he was yelling and I thought you…" His voice cracked, but his meaning was obvious. She'd thought she was dead too.

"I'm okay," she assured him, and then belated realized that she was. She was okay. She was alive. A startled tear dropped down her own cheek. "I'm safe."

Logan's eyes sparkled like fairy dust when he pulled away from her. "Yeah, you are."

"Where's Lucky?" she asked, though she hated to bring him up. She didn't want to waste another second on the man unless he was being lowered into a grave.

"County lockup," he replied with a wry scoff. "They're charging him here for that kid's death before they try him in Neptune for you and Wallace. Lucky bastard should be in the ground."

She wished she didn't agree.

"So, Veronica, aren't your nine lives about up?"

His voice was teasing, but she knew he was scared. She'd damn near gotten herself killed. She smiled through it, though. Better to laugh than to cry. "I think I've got one or two saved for a rainy day."

He shook his head, and took her face in his hands, so soft on the bruises she didn't want to remember she had. He held her with a touch she had tried to forget during those months apart, that she'd tried to hold onto during those long hours with Lucky.

She slipped her heavy arms around his waist, her hands sliding under the hem of his shirt in a simple need to touch him. Her hands were gauze-wrapped, and she harrumphed with the thwarted cause. But then he kissed her—so delicately—and she didn't care.

"_What do you want for your birthday?" he asked her one day as they were walking Backup, and she threw him a humoring smile. _

"_A pony," she replied in that little girl voice she usually reserved for her dad. When he just rolled his eyes, she faked pensiveness. "Hmm. Too clichéd? Alright, how about the sun?"_

_This time, he just looked confused. "The sun?"_

_She pointed up at the overcast sky and nodded. "It hasn't come out in a week. This is California for pete's sake; I want the sun!"_

_He chuckled and shook his head, pulling her closer and kissing her temple. Alright, Miss Mars. You know I can't refuse you anything."_

_Weeks later, after they were broken up and she'd been celebrating her 18th birthday with her newly repossessed Duncan, she came home to find a small package outside the apartment door. It was wrapped in blue with a satin bow, and she knew who it was from. _

_In her room she opened the box, no larger than Duncan's had been. She felt guilty even comparing the two. Inside was a necklace, very simple but elegant. Obviously more her style than his. It was a gold sun almost the size of a quarter, with white gold accenting around the edges. On the back was engraved in tiny cursive lettering: _Now the sun follows wherever you go, just as I will.

_The note inside said that it had been ordered before they'd broken up and that he figured she might still appreciate it. "I'm sorry," it said. "As always, I could never refuse you anything."_

_She took it from its box and held it in her hands, warming the metal in her palms. And then she let the tears come because it felt like his kiss against her skin, and she hated herself for liking it. She hated herself for pressing it to her lips. _

_She cried harder when she slipped it back in its box and hid it in the back of her closet. It wasn't fair to Duncan._

"Hey," a voice made her freeze, her eyes flying wide. How could she have forgotten? Oh, god, she'd forgotten. "Please try to tone down the PDA. I can hear you groping."

"Dad!" she shouted, looking at the other side of the room for the first time since waking up. A curtain divided them, but she'd know that voice anywhere. "Daddy!"

She tried to propel herself off the bed, but the pain in her chest suddenly returned with a vengeance, and Logan pushed her back down. She would have tried again but for the broken ribs. Damn Lucky.

"I'm here, honey," Keith said, and when Logan pulled back the curtain there were tears on his cheeks. Veronica hated to see her father cry. Of course, just then she was halfway to sobbing, herself.

She reached an arm out, and he grasped her hand. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

* * *

Wallace was getting ready to pace the room. Screw the bullet hole and the way his eyelids ached to close. His skin prickled excruciatingly with pent up tension. He had been awake and aware for six hours and thirteen minutes. And forty-three seconds.

His last call from Mac had been an hour before, telling him that Keith was five minutes from picking her up. What could have happened in that time? Why hadn't they called?

But he was confined to bed, by his mother's presence more than anything. Alicia was still there—past visiting hours, he'd reminded her several times—reading a book quietly in the corner like a prison warden waiting for a jail break. Surprisingly, she hadn't had the doctors put him out yet, but if he tried to stand up, he was sure it would be the next step.

"I'm sure she's fine," Alicia's voice was steady, would have been calming in any other situation. She didn't look up from her book, but that voice was smooth as buttermilk. "The police probably need to talk to her, and Keith will have doctors go over every inch of her to make sure she's alright."

"Yeah," he nodded, seeing the logic through the placation. "Yeah, I'm sure you're—"

When the phone rang, everything in the world stopped. His heart stopped.

Suddenly the phone felt like a foreign object in his hands. "Hello?"

"Hey BBF. How you doing?"

Her voice was tired, rough like sandpaper. But he could hear her smile and he let himself smile, too. He let tears of relief drip down his cheeks. It felt like they'd been hiding behind his eyes all day.

"Me? I'm alright," he replied as calmly as he could. "But we're not talking about me here. Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm unsinkable as ever," she laughed, and he heard some grumbling in the background. Whoever it was, they didn't seem to be buying it either.

"Yeah, well, you get your unsinkable ass back to Neptune and I'll believe you," he chuckled. He couldn't hold it, though. Her voice was too rough not to worry. "Seriously, V. How'd you come out in this?"

She sighed like she was tired of answering questions. Too freaking bad. She was going to answer his. "A couple broken ribs," she replied softly. "Some bruises. A few stitches here and there. They won't give me a mirror to see my face yet, but it feels pretty bad. It's nothing that won't heal, though."

He swore and Alicia gave him a reproachful look but didn't say anything.

"They're going to keep me here for a couple days before they'll transfer me," she continued as if she hadn't heard him. "My dad got shot, but he'll be fine. We're sharing a room."

Wallace glanced at his mother but didn't hold eye contact. She wouldn't be happy. "But he's alright?"

"Yeah, he'll be out about the same time I will. Until then it's like quality time, except that neither of us are allowed to move."

"Good." He sighed, suddenly feeling so very tired. Every deferred moment of stress was catching up to him. "I'll probably still be here when you get here. They're going to keep me for a while to make sure I don't get infected or anything. Paranoid doctors."

She chuckled stiffly. "Yeah, well, from what I hear you've made yourself a perpetual pain in their asses worrying about me. Why don't you get some sleep and I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

He really didn't want to agree, but he had the feeling he wouldn't say no to her for a long time yet. "Yeah, sure. I'll talk to you tomorrow, V."

"Night, BFF."

He held the phone a few seconds after the line disconnected. And then, finally, he let his eyes drift closed. He was asleep within seconds.

* * *

"So who's next?" Veronica asked, smiling tiredly at three of her favorite men. Her dad was lying in his bed, staring at her. Logan was sitting in the chair next to her bed, staring at her. And Weevil was propped against the radiator, also staring at her. She had the feeling she would have to get used to claustrophobia.

"Mac," Logan replied, his eyes flicking over her for the hundredth time. Something told her he was cataloging wounds for reference in case Lucky ever got out. "I don't know if she's heard it from the cops yet, but I know she's waiting to hear from you."

"Yeah, that sounds good." She smiled, thinking of Mac using her computer wiles to track her down. That e-mail had been pretty clever. But then, that e-mail had tipped the motel clerk, and if he hadn't been trying to save her…

"Hey V?"

She looked up at Weevil. "Yeah?"

"Wherever it is that mind is headed, don't go there."

She sighed out a chuckle. Seemed like sound advice. "Thanks. And thanks again for coming for me. For helping save me." She smiled a little wider, as wide as she could with a stitch in the corner of her mouth. "I know it couldn't have helped your reputation."

He smiled his little amused half-smile. "Yeah, well, let's just say we're even on favors for a while."

She actually laughed, and then coughed with a hand to her side. Even Logan managed a smirk before he winced and fretted over her. "Ha. You can't fool me," she smiled through it. "You're just a big softy at heart. Come on, Weevil. Embrace your inner marshmallow."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Weevil smirked, though his eyes worried. "In the meantime, if you don't need me here, I'm going to head my marshmallow ass back to Neptune."

"It's ten o'clock!" Veronica protested. "You're not driving all the way back. Not after a day like today. We'll set you up in a hotel or something. Write it off as a business expense."

"That's alright," he smiled, shaking his head. "It's only a couple hours and I gotta get back before Ophelia wakes up tomorrow morning. She gets real crabby if I'm not there to make her breakfast."

Veronica arched her eyebrows. "Oh, no. Not a soft bone in _that_ body." Logan hid a snicker.

Weevil smirked again. "Keep talking, Blondie. I dare ya." And then, without the sarcasm, "You take care of yourself, alright? Call me if you need anything, and by anything I mean anything life-threatening enough to bring my ass all the way back here."

"Goodnight, Weevil," she smiled, waving as he walked out the door.

She took a few minutes to be silent before picking up the phone to call Mac. She knew the girl was likely pacing the floor in tense anticipation, and that prolonging that wait wasn't particularly nice, but she needed a moment to breathe. With her broken ribs and despite the painkillers she could see dripping into her IV, her breaths had to be shallow and somewhat stunted.

"You alright?" Logan asked, sending a glance at Keith, who was giving her the same sort of look. "Do you want some water, some air, some anything?"

She put a hand over his and rolled her eyes to quiet him. "I'm fine, thanks. I just need to rest my voice a bit."

"Oh," he said, nodding as he interlaced their fingers. "Okay."

But then he didn't seem to know what to do with himself. He smiled at her, looked up at Keith, looked out the window for a moment, and then sat back in his chair. If he wasn't allowed to talk with her, kiss her, or touch much of anything besides her hand, he wasn't quite sure what he could do for her. She tried not to snicker at his awkwardness.

"Fine," she chuckled after a few minutes, "go get me some water or something. Just stop looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes."

He looked appropriately chastised before standing to refill her water pitcher. "I'm not puppy-dogging you. I'm just feeling useless. I'm not used to being useless."

"Aw, honey," she crooned melodramatically, waving him closer, "you're never useless." He leaned down and she placed a quick, placating kiss on his cheek. "You can always just stand there and look pretty."

"Oh, gee, thanks," he groaned, though he pressed a kiss to her forehead and smiled in the way that said he loved her anyway.

"Alright, slave boy," Veronica said when he came back with her water, "make yourself useful and dial Mac for me."

_A/N: Alright, so I know it wasn't earth-shattering or anything, but I thought a chapter of relatively low emo-ness might make a good transition between Veronica's rescue and the Mac/Cassidy situation coming into play. _

_So, let me know what you think. Reviews are pixie-stix to me. They give me energy and help me write. Besides, I'm at the starting-line of a very long sugar fast right now, so some theoretical sugar highs would be all kinds of wonderful. Thanks guys. O:-)_


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: I know it's been forever since I updated this, but school has been hell and everything else has been nuts. I haven't even watched the last couple eps because I don't have time to get back into everything. I didn't even remember that tonight was Veronica Mars night. It's all craziness. But here it is, and I hope you all enjoy. _

Mac sat at her computer, typing random terms into her search engine, looking for the last two lost boys from Woody's little league picture. She probably could have found them by now—hours ago, really—but her heart wasn't in it. Her mind was somewhere else completely.

"Cassidy?" she called without looking up.

"Yeah, Mac."

All afternoon he had been just two steps away from her, running out for takeout or coffee when she'd been exhausted. He had let her lean on him once when she'd completely broken down in frustration. When her hand had been shaking too much to type, he'd held it until it stilled. He'd suggested more than a few times that she just quit the Goodman search and let her mind rest, but she'd needed something to keep her fingers busy.

"Cassidy, could you get me some more aspirin?"

In her periphery she saw him nod and head into Keith's office. It had taken him ten minutes to find a bottle in Keith's desk. She knew with a job like they had, the Mars duo had to keep at least a couple bottles on hand.

"Here you go," he said, placing it carefully on the desk next to her, like the slightest sound would hurt her worse. "Why don't I just leave the bottle?"

The corner of her lip quirked just a little before she downed two pills. "God, I hope we're not here that long."

He tried to chuckle and failed. The tension was too thick to hold humor. "Mac, really, why don't you just leave this case—"

When the phone rang she practically pounced on it, and he backed slowly out of the room but within earshot.

"Hello?" she answered, not even bothering with the company tagline. If it was anyone else she was going to hang up anyway.

"Mac," came a very tired-sounding Veronica, and she swore she wouldn't start crying, "I hear you've been the brains of this operation from the get-go. Figures."

It was so Veronica that she laughed. She laughed genuinely and it sounded strange, like she hadn't taken a breath in hours. "What the hell took you so long? I swear, the next time you get yourself kidnapped, I have dibs on your computer."

"Oh, trust me," Veronica laughed, and that too sounded strange, "I'm really not looking for a repeat. How are you doing?"

That, too, inspired genuine laughter, and in her periphery, Mac could see Cassidy smile and disappear further into Keith's office.

"I'm doing alright." She smiled easily now, and it seemed like she hadn't for too long. "I've been trying to solve the Goodman/bus crash mystery in your absence. You know, I could get used to all this P.I. stuff."

"I'm sure you could." Her voice seemed so tired, her sentences coming in spurts like she couldn't get enough air. Mac didn't want to ask how bad off she was. "So how are things going with that, anyway?"

"Haven't really had a mind to finish," she admitted, looking down at the keyboard like she'd betrayed it. "I have a pretty solid lead though. I just need to track down a couple more names and we should know who else on that team was…molested." It still felt wrong saying it. Things like that shouldn't happen. Hopefully that will tell us who blew up the bus."

Veronica seemed pleased, her voice touched with the pride of a mentor. "Good work, Mac. Maybe you should come work for us on a more permanent basis."

"Oh, no," she said, though she held the phone between her cheek and her shoulder so she could begin the search again with fervor. She'd caught a second wind. "When you get back here, I'm hanging up my P.I. boots and turning over the reigns. I can't handle the stress."

She flipped through screen after screen of pictures marked with the French class roster names, still making small-talk with Veronica. If she really wanted to concentrate, she could have just hacked into the DMV database and found them that way, but she didn't want to lose Veronica's voice. Most of the pictures she found through the regular searches were middle-aged men out in Oklahoma or whatnot. But every once in a while she'd come up with a guy she recognized from school but not the picture, and she could cross him off the list.

When she got bored with that, she began looking for Shark's pictures again, hoping one of them might be captioned with something other than, "Woody Goodman leads team to…" or "Goodman takes hard hit when three players…" None ever mentioned the kids' names, or even alluded to them as something other than "the team."

Finally, on the fourth screen she came across something new,. It was the same large picture stretching across the entire screen, but it wasn't out of the newspaper. It was likely put up by one of the parents of players because it had all of the names captioned underneath. It was just what she was looking for.

"Hold on a second, V," she mumbled, putting the phone down on the desk while she flipped between the picture and the class roster.

There was Peter and Marcos, smiling in the picture like they rarely had in school. The next name didn't match…nor the next…nor the next. She went through the caption of names, and not one of the other boys in the picture had been in that French class.

She sighed, tapping her nails on the edge of the laptop. Her big lead, her only lead, had hit a brick wall. She wasn't used to this. It just didn't happen to her. Frustrated, she shoved the computer away from her.

The screen shifted. The page scrolled down a fraction of an inch she didn't know was there.

And another line of the caption appeared.

_Not Pictured: Cassidy Casablancas._

For a moment it didn't mean anything. It was just the name of another player on the team. He couldn't have done anything. He couldn't have been the third. It was just a coincidence. But then she looked over at the roster and found the name that she had instinctively skimmed over a hundred times or more. _Cassidy Casablancas._ The boy who wouldn't really kiss her. The boy who was always a little too shy, a little too nervous. The boy she knew was smarter than anyone gave him credit for.

_Cassidy Casablancas._

Just a spitting distance away in the next room.

With shaking hands, she picked up the phone again. "Veronica?"

"I'm here. What's going on?"

"Can I talk to Logan a second?" Her voice shook only a little.

"Sure, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just need a second."

There was a pause, excruciatingly long, and Logan's voice answered. "Hey, Mac. What's up?"

* * *

"Yes."

Well that didn't make sense.

"What's going on?" he asked, looking at Veronica's confused face. She obviously didn't know any more than he did.

"Yeah, it's fine." That made even less sense, and he could hear her voice waver just a little. "Cassidy's here to keep me company."

He didn't answer for a long moment, trying to sort through the message. It was coded; that was obvious. And if Cassidy really was there…

"Are you in trouble?" he asked finally, and both Veronica and Keith were staring at him now. "Is it Cassidy?"

"That's a definite 'yes'." Her voice broke painfully, and her panic was clearer than she probably wanted. "Maybe you could call someone about that. Now that Veronica's safe, I'm going to try to get out of here."

"I'll call the sheriff's department," Logan replied, and her sigh was audible. "Be careful."

"I will. I'll call you when I get home."

As soon as she hung up, he dialed the sheriff. Very soon after that, he called Weevil.

* * *

Her hands were a little less shaky when she rested the phone back in its cradle. All she had to do was stand up and tell him she was going home. It wouldn't be that hard. He'd just take her shakiness as relief or tiredness or whatever the hell he wanted. All she had to do was get to her car and she could take a deep breath.

Again, her gut reaction was to think it was all a mistake. He was her boyfriend; shouldn't she have had a clue? An inkling that something wasn't right? Every minor oddity had been excused as the younger brother syndrome that Dick so completely inspired. But Cassidy couldn't have killed people. His own classmates? She couldn't believe it.

But there that name was, still staring up at her from the screen.

Glancing over her shoulder, she shut down the computer and closed the monitor. It would give her away.

"Cassidy?" she called, and she couldn't remember how she'd sounded when she'd called the name just ten minutes before.

"Mac," he answered, pushing the door of Keith's office open just a little further. "Was that Veronica?"

"Yeah," she sigh a shaky chuckle. "She's fine, I guess. A little worse for wear but she'll recover."

He bobbed his head in a measured nod, not moving out of the doorway. "Good."

"Yeah." Her mouth felt dry—desert dry—as she choked out words she could only assume made sense. "Since she's good, I'm really tired, and my car is just outside." After a moment she realized that didn't come out right, but then she decided that it didn't matter. As long as her car would start. "Anyway, I'm going to go do that…I mean, go home…because I'm tired."

There was that half-smile, and she didn't want to believe the circumstantial evidence. His head was bowed slightly, his eyes looking up through his lashes, and it felt like she could have been wrong.

But then he straightened up and she saw the gun in his hand.

"Uh…" No, that wasn't what she'd wanted to say. "I mean, Cassidy…"

The sentence hung in the air unfinished. There was nothing else to say.

"I heard, Mac," he said calmly, and she didn't understand. He must have seen it too because he smiled again. "The phones," he explained, "they're connected. I picked up the extension. I heard Logan's side."

She just stared dumbly at him, unable to form a thought that wasn't a scream.

"I _know_, Mac," he said, and his voice was darker. It was mean, like it had been that day when he'd yelled at her. It was dark like when he talked to Dick at the Carnival. It wasn't her Cassidy.

"Yeah, I got that," she stammered out, taking an instinctive step away from him. The back of her leg hit the chair and she was so surprised that she looked away.

He didn't move a muscle.

"Then I guess you know," she said evenly, licking her cracked lips, "that the police are going to be here pretty soon."

"Yup." He didn't go into further detail.

"So what does that mean?" Suddenly everything was something different. Cassidy wasn't Cassidy. There was a gun in his hand and the office was anything but safe. She was anything but safe. Any fleeting idea that she'd misunderstood the evidence had evaporated.

She envied Veronica in her nice, secure hospital room.

He took a step forward, and she took another step back. The chair moved for her, and she didn't look away.

Cassidy's face wavered for a moment, and he looked like himself again. "Mac," he whispered a plea, like she could save his soul if she wanted to. "I didn't want this."

"You didn't want what?" she asked, her voice beginning to shake again without restraint. "You killed them, Cassidy. You killed those kids, our friends."

"None of them were my friends." It seemed like an automatic response, something he had told himself many times before. But then his voice softened, like the lost part of him was crying out. "They were going to tell everyone, Mac. It wasn't their secret to tell, their life to ruin. Not for me."

"But you killed them," she repeated. She couldn't help herself.

His face turned dark again, like Jekyll and Hyde were tag-teaming. "We have to go, Mac," he told her, and his voice held no emotional at all. He raised the gun to point at her chest, and she let loose the tears she'd been fighting.

But she didn't know for which of them she was crying.

_A/N: I know, I know. Cliffies are evil and so am I. But I'll try to keep writing as steadily as I can through all the other crap that's going on. Don't expect anything instant, though. I may be good but I can't freeze time. Only Hiro on Heroes can do that (and I haven't been able to watch that, either). Anyway, review please, and thanks for reading. O:)_


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: So I know it's been forever, but it'll probably be forever again next time, so an apology probably won't cover it. Anyway, this will probably be the second to last chapter, so we're pretty close to the end now. Thanks to all my readers who are still reading despite my insanely inconsistent updates. I hope you all enjoy. _

Logan was damn near going crazy, bouncing on the pads of his feet as he sat in the chair next to Veronica's bed. Keith had been rolled out under protest a few minutes before to sleep in a private room. Something about hospital policy against coed sleeping quarters. Logan had vehemently refused to leave, even to the point of bribing the nurse until she'd agreed to let him stay as long as he didn't upset Veronica.

Of course, there wasn't much chance of keeping that promise anymore.

"Something's up," he muttered, standing abruptly for the fourth time in five minutes. "She should have called by now."

Veronica looked at him, her eyes tired but so worried, and he understood exactly why Mac had asked for him instead of telling her. He really wished he'd kept her out of the loop, too. "What exactly did she say, Logan? I don't understand."

"That's just it," he replied, scratching his scalp impatiently. "She said a whole bunch of stuff that makes no sense, like she was trying to play cool. All that came through clear was that she's in trouble and Beaver's is somehow involved."

"Beaver? She could probably snap Beaver in half if she wanted." She tried to laugh, but the words sounded hollow and he understood why. Mac wouldn't eat a hamburger, never mind hurt her own boyfriend. Logan wanted to believe the same was true for his friend. "Besides, why would he hurt her?"

He really didn't want to believe Beaver could do something to Mac. Scratch that; he knew Beaver couldn't do anything to Mac. He was Beaver. Something wasn't adding up. "I don't know. Did she say anything to you?"

She shook her head, and then stopped abruptly like it made her dizzy. "Nothing weird," she replied breathlessly, and he took her hand to calm her. "She told me she was still working on the Goodman thing, trying to find his last victim. Something about the bus crash. Then I was telling her about the rescue and, well, you heard all that. And then she told me to hang on, and when she came back she asked for you."

See, nothing about Beaver. It must have been something else. It must have been… "Oh no. No, no, no." _Couldn't be_. "No freaking way."

"What?"

"She was trying to find the third," he whispered, working things out in his head. _This is not happening_. "She was looking for the third and then Cassidy…" He couldn't wrap his head around it. "But he couldn't…I mean, Woody didn't…He would have told someone…" He sat heavily in his chair.

Something flashed in Veronica's eyes, and he knew she understood. She reached for the phone. "He's going to kill her!" she yelled as he pulled it out of her grasp. "What are you doing? I have to call her! I have to call someone! He's going to _kill_ her!"

Logan shook his head, pulling the cradle into his lap. "I already called the sheriff's department, Veronica. And I called Weevil. There's no one else to call."

"But…" she seemed to run out of fuel, resting her head back on the pillow in something akin to defeat. "But he's…"

"Go to sleep, Veronica," he told her fervidly, taking the plug out of the phone. "There's nothing more you can do for her, and you're going to kill yourself worrying. Looks like you already pulled a couple stitches."

She followed his eyes to the red spot just starting to show through her gown below her left collarbone. She put a hand over it, seemingly surprised by her own blood. He could tell it shook her up.

"I'll do everything I can," he told her, and she looked up at him with a bit of a daze. She had to be so tired. He kissed her on the forehead and squeezed her hand gently. "I promise."

She smiled tightly, letting his hand go. "Just…let me know, okay?"

"Of course." _As long as it's good news_.

With a nod goodbye, he headed out into the hallway and told the nurses that Veronica needed to be patched up. He added quietly, as if she would hear, that she could use something to help her sleep for a while. After he added a little half-hearted charm, they agreed to forward all her room calls to his cell phone.

And that was all there was to it. He would call Weevil, tell him what was going on, but that was it. A hundred miles away from their terrified friend, there was nothing else he could do.

* * *

"Where are we going?" Mac asked, and somehow her voice was even. She couldn't understand why. The voice in her head was screaming.

Cassidy glanced over at her, winced just a little, and then turned back to the road. "I don't know," he admitted, his hands twitching nervously on the steering wheel. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. Why couldn't you just give up the damned investigation when I asked you to? It was for your own good!" His voice was desperate, like he was truly trying to convince her that this wasn't his fault.

_He's so scared_, she thought, and part of her still wanted to comfort him. To tell him that she understood, that it wasn't his fault at all. Woody had hurt him, made him ashamed. It was Woody's fault they were in that car at that exact moment, heading to heaven knows where.

But he'd killed people. He'd killed innocent people with lives and families and people who had loved them. They'd died knowing that they were going to die. From the impact or the water, it didn't matter which. They'd known with excruciating clarity that they'd been in the last thirty seconds of their lives. There were better ways to cover a secret.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked, genuinely afraid but with that same steady tone, and he looked at her sharply. It was that fear again, that she thought badly of him. And yet his response said that none of that mattered.

"You'll tell," he replied somberly, and she had her answer.

He was going to kill her. He'd most likely shoot her—one bullet and the lights would go out. Someone would find her body in the woods or in an alley or washed up on the beach somewhere. The police would call her mother—or worse, show up at the door. There would be a memorial service. Veronica would cry. Beaver would probably cry, too, to cover his ass. Whatever Logan had told the police, it wouldn't be enough to prove anything. He would get away with it.

"You're such a coward," she whispered, letting herself cry again with the loss of hope. No one would get to her in time. She, like Cassidy's other victims, had the clarity of knowing that she was in the last hours, maybe minutes, of her life.

"I know," he whispered back, not looking at her. She was glad. She'd always loved his eyes, but it would be cruel to see them now.

She leaned her head against the window and wished she'd never found out.

* * *

Hopeless. Freaking hopeless. He was going as fast as the old Impala would go, fairly unhindered by traffic, and he knew without question that he would not get there in time to save Mac. For all he knew, it was too late already. The cops were unreliable at best; even with what little help they'd given with Veronica, they hadn't gotten close to Lucky until he'd been unconscious. Lamb was probably sleeping like a baby in some Hilton in Ramona. That girl wasn't going to live through the night.

It was a damned shame, too. Girl was sweet. Quirky. Even in the short eight hours since he'd first spoken to her, he'd come to think of her as his girl. Like Veronica. She had that same spunk. Damned shame.

He'd never liked that Beaver kid. Never mind the fact that he was one of those spoiled, rich, white boys. There had always been something a little off about him. Too quiet. Too submissive. Someone shoulda seen through the little brother crap. Dick was a dick, but Beaver was all kinds of unsettling. Someone shoulda seen. Now it was too late. Too late for Cervando. Too late for Mac.

But he was trying. Pedal to the floor, he was defying every law of man and nature to cover two hours' distance in half the time. Wasn't even close to possible, but no one could accuse him of not trying.

She was one of his girls, and, hopeless or not, he'd move heaven and earth to save her.

* * *

When Cassidy pulled the car into the Camelot parking lot, Mac was too busy trying not to panic, to notice. She was somewhere else, thinking of other places she would love to have been just then. On her computer. Eating ice cream. Watching her mother make a dinner that she, as a vegetarian, was morally opposed to. Sitting beside Veronica's hospital bed. Sitting beside Wallace's hospital bed. Taking a physics test. Didn't matter.

"Get out," Cassidy said, and for half a moment she thought he was letting her go. But the look on his face and the gun in his hand told her otherwise. She imagined briefly that she would like to shoot him with that gun. But, of course, she wouldn't get the chance and she probably wouldn't have the guts if she tried.

She opened her door slowly, with the cautiousness of someone facing a rabid animal. He was twitchy, high-strung. He kept his finger around the trigger.

"What are we doing here?" she asked, her words spoken slowly, too.

"I need to think," he said, slamming his door without anger and walking ahead of her towards the office. He didn't seem to worry that she might run away. She wasn't planning to try just then anyway.

The guy behind the counter was typical: older man, balding, cheap clothes, cheap cologne. She wanted to cry out to him, but she didn't say a word. The gun was behind Beaver's back, and she knew he was stronger than she was. She wasn't going to win by fighting him.

The man sold them a room without asking questions, not even a name, and he pocketed an extra hundred. Probably thought they were just some star-crossed teenagers looking for a night away from the parents. A friendly bed. No, crying out wouldn't do a damned thing.

"You heard what I told Logan," she whispered as he dragged her up the stairs. "He knows you're involved. He'll know it was you."

He didn't pause in his steps, didn't loosen his grip on her elbow. But he seemed to think it over as his eyes swept their surroundings suspiciously. "It doesn't matter," he said finally, soullessly. "It won't matter."

This _wasn't_ her Cassidy. Nothing about him was recognizable. There were shadows under his eyes she hadn't seen earlier, wrinkles around his frown too old for his age. He didn't smile like he used to when she'd held his hand, when she'd rested her forehead under his chin after he'd said something shyly stupid. She would never see that boy again. Now he was Mr. Hyde, holding her elbow instead of her hand. Holding her captive instead of embracing her.

She wanted to scream at him, take him by the shoulders and shake him until he came back to her. But maybe her Cassidy was just a myth, a screen, a cover. She hated herself for thinking it, but her Cassidy had never existed.

The motel room he ushered her into was exactly what she'd expected. Grunge, grime, and mystery stains, but the sheets looked clean. In a place like the Camelot, that was all that needed to be.

"Sit down," he said quietly, pushing her to sit before she could do so on her own. He stayed standing, pacing the floor between the bed and the TV.

She was just waiting for it. Click, bam, lights out. Or maybe he wouldn't shoot her, wary of the rice-paper walls. He'd smother her. She looked at the pillows and picked out the one that looked the cleanest. Maybe he'd listen if she asked him to use that one. Or he could use the telephone cord to strangle her. Or hit her over the head with the lamp. It took her a few minutes to realize how morbid the train of thought really was.

He was staring at her now, half-sitting on the dresser next to the TV. The mirror behind him showed the muscles straining in his arms where he gripped the dresser's edge.

"I've done so many things," he whispered, and she was trapped in his tortured eyes. "I've done so many horrible things, Mac."

"I know," she replied. Her voice cracked and she tried to swallow. It didn't work, and Beaver disappeared for a moment and brought her a plastic cup of water. It seemed so out of context that she almost smiled, but she took the cup and drank eagerly instead. "Thanks."

"You never knew half of who I am, you know," he said in lieu of an answer, leaning back against the dresser again. Instantly her eyes began to tear. "My dad put me on that little league team—to toughen me up, you know? Dick didn't need it. I was always the disappointment. Now Dad is running from the FBI." He smiled then, and it was dark and sadistic. "I made him run. Serves the bastard right. He created me."

"You turned him in?" Veronica had told her about solving that case. Cassidy had seemed as surprised as anyone.

His smile flattened then, his eyes losing all humor. "I knew exactly what he was doing. I knew about Logan, too. I knew every dirty secret in that house. _I _paid attention."

_And they never did_, she finished for him. They'd never noticed how deep he was spiraling. Neither had she.

"I killed Curley," he said suddenly, and she choked on a sip of water. "He knew about the bus and the bikers didn't finish him; there was no choice."

She didn't even try to answer anymore. The part of her mind that was scared shitless was beginning to acclimate to the constant shock. It was curious, though, why he was telling her all this. Confessions to a dead woman. Maybe it was cathartic.

"I put the bomb under Woody's car, but of course you knew that. The bomb on his plane is pretty useless now, but if he ever gets out…well…" He seemed sad, like it was weighing on him. Too much blood on his hands. It would soak the carpet soon. And then flatly, almost academically, "Over time it gets easier to be the person you hate. You tell lies and you get bitter and pretty soon you don't mind hurting people. I was 10 years old, you know. That's a lot of time."

"You're a good liar," she told him. She couldn't think of anything else.

He smiled a little and she looked away like it burned her eyes. "I know."

"Were we a lie?" she asked before she could help it. Her lip bled where she bit it.

And another of those painfully Cassidy smiles. "I don't know," he replied like it was funny, but he seemed to think hard on it. "I don't think so. Not the important parts, anyway."

She hated being relieved, but she was. Just a little. She was being morbid again, thinking that at least her killer might mourn her.

_A/N: I know. Depressing, right. Sorry about that, but all will be concluded in the next chapter (or the one after that if I'm really longwinded). Let me know what you think. I won't be able to update too terribly soon because I'll be offline all Spring Break and I'm starting a new job on Monday, so I'm going to be crazy busy for the rest of eternity. But I will finish this, I promise. So let me know what you liked and didn't like, where it was too slow or not clear enough. You know the drill, Just talk to me. _


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N: Yes, I know it's been forever. I know you've all given up on me. But this is the chapter that you've all been waiting for, so maybe there's a slight chance you'll forgive me just a little. So here goes. Hope you enjoy it._

Logan was still sitting outside Veronica's room an hour later, nodding in and out of a doze with his feet propped up on the magazine table. His cell phone sat annoyingly silent in his lap, ready and waiting for a call from Mac, Weevil, or even the police saying they'd found her body. It was anyone's guess, and every passing minute the odds were more in favor of the third.

He'd tried going out, but food wasn't appealing and he didn't feel like wandering aimlessly. Veronica would need clothes when she was released, but he had a feeling he'd have time enough for that later. The doctors had said two days minimum before they could transfer her. Besides, if he tried to buy clothes just then, he would probably get distracted and bring back something like a muumuu. Or possibly something slutty.

So he sat. And dozed. And woke, shifted, and dozed again. It was getting close to midnight after a hell of a day, and he really wished he could climb into bed with Veronica and have a good night's sleep. But it wasn't the time for that either. It was time for that freaking phone to ring, but it didn't.

At that moment, he figured it would never ring again.

* * *

Weevil didn't expect to find anything at the office. Well, that was a lie. Part of him expected to see her there, exactly the way she had been only hours earlier: sitting at the desk, typing away on the laptop like she was born doing it. And then part of him expected to find her there, behind that desk, broken or bloody or just plain dead. No matter how he shook the thought away, he could still picture her there.

What he got, though, when Deputy Zurick finally let him into the office was exactly what knew he would find: not a damned thing. Place didn't look ransacked or torn apart. The lamp on the desk was still on, the laptop cover shut. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn the girl had simply gone out for coffee.

But the desk chair was turned over and he knew it was useless to pretend. He'd given up pretending a long, long time ago.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he flipped open his phone and began a slow pace around the office to see if anything else was out of place. The call picked up on the first ring.

"Whatcha got? Did you find her?" Logan asked eagerly.

"Office is empty, man," he reported, rubbing his eyes tiredly as he headed back outside. "Zurick said the place was empty when he got here. They have a bulletin out on the car, but it's been over an hour. It's been too damn long, Logan."

"Don't even start that." He sounded impatient and edgy. Weevil let it slide. "If someone doesn't find Mac by the time Veronica wakes up, we're gonna have to tie her down to keep her from going after Beaver."

Weevil didn't want to think about V getting out of bed for at least a week, and he knew Logan was right. Broken ribs or not, if they didn't find the girl alive and well, V would either go completely ballistic or completely shut down. Neither option looked appealing.

_Damn Beaver_.

* * *

_Fucking Beaver._

A movie. He'd wanted to watch a freaking movie. If she wasn't so angry, she would seriously start looking for hidden cameras.

He had gagged her, tied her hands to the shower bar, and gone out for a few minutes. She assumed he'd moved the car; it was a dead giveaway. She'd been counting on that, but it hadn't been a huge surprise. He was a smart guy. Had them all fooled for so long.

He'd come back with a rented movie from the front office, some old black and white. The whole situation was surreal.

So there she was, sitting on that dingy motel bed, catching snippets of dialogue while she went over every possible escape scenario for the seventeenth time. They wouldn't work and she knew it. Had known it the first time she'd thought them through. He still had that damned gun pointed at her, finger on the trigger. When his laughter shook the barrel, she tensed.

"I always wanted to watch that with you," he said, and she looked up to see the screen fading to black. Beaver was looking over at her, a smile hovering precariously on his lips. "Just didn't want to not, you know?"

"Sure," she nodded, more placating than affirming. Part of her really just wanted him to kill her already. Slow torture wasn't doing it for her.

But she was only 18 years old.

"Did you like it?" he asked, and his voice sounded hopeful.

She turned to look at him. He was only 18, too. Everything was too damned surreal. "Yeah, I guess. I was a little preoccupied."

The precarious smile fell, and she was kind of grateful. He looked too young when he smiled. She could so easily have loved him.

"So are you going to kill me now, or did you want to get something to eat first?" she asked, and he just sort of stared at her. She stared right back. "What? We both know it's coming. Why dance around it?"

"Mac . . ." he trailed off, reaching towards her as if to comfort her. Like he could possibly comfort her.

"Please don't." She closed her eyes and wished for him to die. "Don't say my name like that. Don't touch me. Just . . . don't."

_She'd once imagined what it would be like to sleep with him. It would be in a hotel room, though not as disgusting as this one. He'd get a really expensive one with his trust fund money, probably after the prom or graduation or something big like that. He was the kind of guy who hated the limelight but would still make the grand gestures if he needed to. _

_But then she'd questioned him about their physical relationship, her own insecurities emphasized by his, and he'd completely dropped the ball. He'd yelled at her, humiliated her, completely dismissed her when she'd been trying to reassure him. Because of that, he hadn't taken her to the AlternaProm, abandoning her to Veronica's promise to Mr. Space Elevator. And now she would never get to graduate. _

_At least now she knew why he hadn't slept with her, had barely kissed her during the course of their entire relationship. She could blame Woody Goodman for taking his innocence and ultimately making him afraid of her. _

_But she had to blame Beaver for making her afraid of him. _

She felt the mattress rebound as he stood, but she didn't want to open her eyes. She really didn't want to see it coming.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . ._

"Mac." His voice was harder, more controlled. She opened her eyes.

_All good children go to heaven . . ._

"There's one more thing I need to show you."

* * *

Sitting in his Impala, Weevil wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. He'd started driving but pulled over when he realized he had no idea where to go. They were out of clues, out of leads. He didn't expect to spot Beaver's car anywhere; the kid was too smart for that. So what else was there to do? He couldn't just drive around the rest of the night and hope to get a glimpse of red highlights. Ophelia would be up in six hours expecting pancakes.

But, whether he would admit it or not, he'd hate himself if he just packed it up and went home. The girl had spent almost twelve hours putting up with his and everyone else's bullshit trying to save Veronica. Shouldn't someone give her the same benefit? Logan and Keith were out of commission, the sheriff was sleeping it off at some four-star, and he didn't have all the book smarts she did, but at least he could do what he could.

He cut the engine, looking around to try to get his bearings. He was in a parking lot across the street from the Camelot. Why exactly he'd been driving in that direction, he couldn't say. Maybe it was his exhaustion giving him hints. He needed a bed. Or possibly a Red Bull.

He was tempted to ask the desk manager at the Camelot if he had one. A Red Bull, not a bed. He wouldn't touch one of those beds with rubber gloves on. But the motel's regular clientele was just waking up, so someone had to pull third shift. It was a long shot. Hardly worth the walk over there.

He was so damned tired, though.

He leaned his head against the headrest, closing his eyes as it lulled to the side. It would be so easy to just fall asleep there. Get a couple hours in. There was so little chance of finding her now; it almost wasn't worth it to kill himself like this. He'd helped save one hostage tonight. That in itself was enough to earn him points in heaven. He wasn't going for sainthood.

But what if she was alive and he did nothing?

He fought to open his eyes, trying to focus on the sign across the street. Blinking rapidly, he almost missed it, the couple walking out of a room on the second floor. At first he thought he was hallucinating, that he'd actually fallen asleep. He didn't believe in coincidences, and this was too strange for anything else.

But when he smacked himself into sobriety, they were still walking across the balcony. There were the red streaks, and there was Beaver holding the girl's arm, a gun pressed discreetly into her side.

_Dumb fucking luck._

* * *

"Where are we going?" she asked as he pulled her into the pass-through. They didn't seem to be heading to the parking lot, and he probably wouldn't risk driving anyway. Someone was bound to be looking for the vehicle.

_Someone's bound to be looking for me_.

It was the only thought that kept her from crying. She wasn't going to kid herself; she would plead for her life before she died. She'd cry. She'd scream and beg and bargain. But not until she had to. She couldn't show weakness until then.

Being that she was going to die soon, likely within five or ten minutes, she thought she probably should be having flashbacks or seeing her life on a film reel or something. But she didn't. She just noticed with vivid clarity every detail of the metal ladder next to the vending machine that seemed to lead straight into the ceiling.

"Move," he mumbled without venom, though the gun in her side was demanding enough. "There's a trapdoor at the top. The latch is simple; just push up."

_Great_, she thought as she stepped carefully onto the first rung, then the next, _he's going to throw me off the roof. I'll get a few seconds of air and then go splat. Hell, it's only two stories. Maybe I'll get lucky and just be a vegetable for the rest of my life. _

She had the right shoes for this, which made her angry for some reason. In the movies, the heroine always had those completely impractical stiletto heels that would slip on the third rung so she could scream inconspicuously and let the hero know where she was. But just her luck, she was wearing plain, old, superbly-treaded gym shoes, and her only logical hero was the one holding the gun. Stupid unrealistically optimistic movie plots.

In the dim light that sifted up from the parking lamps she could see that the roof was flat, about twenty or thirty square feet with a sloped overhang for five feet all around. There were no safety rails or guards. The access was probably just for maintenance purposes, and the Camelot wasn't known for its high quality of maintenance. Only traffic sounds broke the silence. It seemed a sad, lonely place, as forgotten as she felt.

The gun breached her only escape route before Beaver did, but his head was just behind it, cast in theatrically ghoulish light from beneath.

"What do you think?" he asked as he pulled himself up with the one free hand.

She glanced towards the edge, only a pace or two to the right, and stayed quiet. Her mind was blank. She couldn't think of one single word.

"Look up," he prompted, and she followed quickly.

Moon. Stars. Really black sky. _Oh look, a plane._

"It's really rare for a commercial building in Neptune to have no lights on the roof." He said it like she should care, and for a moment she tried. Nope, couldn't get up the enthusiasm. "Almost any other building in town, you have all this light around and there's no way to see the stars. Do you see how bright they are here?"

She looked up again and moved her concentration away from the plane full of people who were too far away to see them. There they were, millions of stars. All bright and shiny and half of them probably dead at that very moment, billions of light years away.

"They're nice," she said quietly but without interest, as if politely describing an unwanted Christmas gift.

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable in the darkness, and she glanced up again just for something else to look at. If she were in any other situation thinking any other thoughts, the sky would have seemed beautiful. She would have lay back and named the constellations or watched for a shooting star. But now the scene just seemed cold, unfeeling. Those stars would speak no comfort to her tonight.

"I'm really sorry," Beaver said suddenly, and she concentrated on counting the cars that passed so she couldn't hear what he was saying. She didn't want to hear it. "I really didn't want to get you involved in all of this. I thought . . . I just thought after Peter and Marcos it would all disappear. But then Veronica just had to go sticking her nose in—"

"Please stop talking," she whispered, and she could have been begging for her life. Maybe her sanity. He was just so sad when he talked, and it needed to end. "Please, just say your last goodbyes and do what you came here to do. I'm so tired of the wait."

His expression didn't change, but something did, so it must have been his eyes. Deep in the shadows, they might have gotten colder, or more hopeless. She'd never know.

"Alright."

He stood up, and instinctively she got to her own feet. She wanted to die on her feet.

"I just want you to know," he said, again in that soft voice that she loved and hated, "that it wasn't all a lie. You and me, we weren't all a lie. I want you to remember that."

_For what? The three seconds before I hit the pavement?_

"If things were different, I think I could have made you happy." He seemed to struggle there, and she wished she could scoff at the statement. But it meant so much to part of her. Part of her was listening so very intently. That part of her was the one crying. "I mean, I think I was almost happy around you . . . if I could have been the person who you thought I was, you would have made me so happy."

He reached out, and she couldn't make herself move away when he touched her cheek. Wiped the tears away. Touched her bottom lip ever so lightly.

"But I'm not, and you know I won't go to prison."

He dropped his hand and raised the gun. "I'm so sorry, Mac."

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . ._

She closed her eyes and waited for the explosion.

_All good children go to heaven . . ._

"Tell Veronica sorry for me, too."

_Tell Veronica?_

She opened her eyes just as he jerked his hand back, towards his own head.

The shot rang deafeningly through the night, and she let merciful unconsciousness take her.

_A/N: So, was it worth the inexcusably long wait? There's only going to be one chapter left to wrap everything up, but we'll see how long it takes me to write it. Not six months again, I promise. But you gotta tell me what you thought. Love it, hate it, whatever, I want to know. Thanks._


	21. Chapter 21

_A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone. Here's a belated present for you. Again, it's been forever. It took a while to figure out how to how to end this thing, as massive as it is. But here it is, after all the sweat and tears and horrible names slung at me from every direction (and yes, I know that I deserved every one). I hope you've enjoyed reading half as much as I've enjoyed writing it._

_---_

Weevil cursed himself as he lunged forward, just in time to catch her arm but not her head as it hit the cement. She could have rolled right off the roof, collapsing like she did right there on the edge, but he held tight to that arm until he was sure she'd stay put. Beaver went off the roof, landed on some suit's company car with a stomach-churning splat that stuck in Weevil's head even after the car alarm started.

He'd done it all wrong, and if the kid had wanted to kill Mac, she would have been dead. Weevil would have gotten there seconds too late, and it would have haunted him for the rest of his life.

First off, he'd taken precious seconds to do the smart thing (the useless thing) and call the cops. They'd kept him tied up, asking his name and location and stupid little details that didn't matter to anyone. That was mistake one.

Stroke of genius number two was passing that stupid ladder half a dozen times before actually seeing it. He'd crept down the walkways, searching for a door cracked open or a car being hotwired out back. Seconds had been lost to stealth while they'd been sitting not ten feet above his head, having a freaking conversation. Any other psycho white boy and she'd have been dead two minutes ago.

It was only their voices—just loud enough to hear when he'd stopped to collect himself—that had tipped him off, and by then he'd had just enough time to keep her from falling off the damn roof.

She was out cold, didn't stir a bit when he picked her up. She wasn't bleeding where her head hit, but it would probably bruise. Surprisingly, it was the only sign of violence he could find on her. He figured he could move her, get her down off that roof before she woke up and started screaming.

It took some maneuvering to get her down the ladder, but he managed, and by the time they hit the ground floor the ambulance was pulling into the lot. He declined riding in the bus with her because Ophelia would still be wanting pancakes in five and a half hours, but he memorized the paramedics' faces scrupulously and told them to take care of her. They seemed to understand that he'd find out if they didn't.

The ride home was quiet save the quick call to Logan and, once there, he had no trouble collapsing into sleep.

* * *

Veronica woke up crying, not sure exactly why. She couldn't remember the dream she'd been having or why she was so sad, so scared, so hopeless. Then she noticed the heart monitor's steady monotone next to her and remembered what was going on.

"Mac," she whispered to the empty room, wondering how long she'd been asleep and how much she'd missed. Stupid Logan had taken her phone.

It seemed like forever since this whole thing had started, since Lucky had shot Wallace and grabbed her at Neptune High. Or even further back—the bus crash that had tripped the series of events. She'd been searching for the truth for so long, and now it was putting everyone in danger. Her best friends. Her father. Logan and Weevil. They had all been pulled into her dangerous endeavors. And now Mac was—

"She's safe!"

Logan's voice surprised her so much as her door slammed open that she almost didn't catch what he'd said.

"Wait, what? What happened? What's going on?"

"She's safe," he repeated, throwing himself into the chair next to her. "Weevil found them, and now Mac is headed to the hospital in Neptune, but it's nothing. She just fainted and hit her head. They don't think Beaver didn't hurt her."

She let out a long, relieved breath, swallowing tears. "Okay. Okay, that's…really good news." Another breath. A chuckle to release the tension in her chest. "So the police got Beaver? They know he set up the bus crash and everything?"

Logan was silent, a shadow crossing over his eyes, but it wasn't the anger or disgust he'd seen before when they'd figured out Cassidy's secret. His frown was too deep, his eyes too glossy. Something was very wrong.

"What happened?"

He forced a small, ironic smile that didn't fit the mood. "Beaver…shot himself…on the roof of the Camelot. He's dead."

Veronica's first reaction was relief. He'd murdered a bus full of classmates. He'd kidnapped Mac. Obviously he was a dangerous man. But the look on Logan's face was enough to remind her that they'd been friends, Beaver and Logan. He'd lost a friend tonight—which, thankfully, was one more than she had.

"I'm sorry, Logan."

He shook his head, that smile tightening painfully. "I know that he did a lot of horrible things, but he wasn't a horrible person. I mean…what Woody did to him…I can hate Lucky for what he did to you, but…"

"It's okay to not hate him," Veronica sighed, putting a hand over his.

The fingers he ran through his hair shook like a junkie's. "I should have seen it, you know? A good friend would have noticed, right? I mean, friends don't let friends go psycho."

"No one noticed." Though, on closer inspection, that wasn't really comforting. "What I mean is, he hid it pretty well."

"Yeah." Logan pushed that same painful smile, stroking her arm as he stood to kiss her forehead. "You rest now, honey, okay? Everyone's safe, everything's solved, there's nothing left to worry about."

Veronica chuckled disbelievingly. "Oh, Logan, don't jinx us. The universe will find something."

He smiled a real smile, kissing her again on the mouth. "You're right. I said nothing. Now go back to sleep."

She closed her eyes, feeling a peace that could only come from a solved case and a lot of morphine. It settled over her like a fog, wrapping her in a warm blanket of resolution as the events of the past 12 hours spun through her head.

"_Lucky!" she screamed, standing. She wasn't sure what compelled her out of her hiding place, shouting a madman's name, but Wallace's blood was beginning to pool and Lucky wasn't going to let him be saved without a substitution. "Lucky!"_

"_Does that sound like something a sane person would do?" His voice when he spoke was quiet, childlike, and it made her shiver. "Sanity wasn't made for lost little boys."_

"_So far Lucky hasn't hurt me, but he has a gun and I'm scared. Please come find me."_

_A familiar lime green Impala, trailed by three bikes, drove by in the opposite direction and Veronica wanted so much to scream to them. She wanted to wave her hands and make him see her, but he wouldn't hear over the bikes and he was already fading into the distance. _

"_Missing You, Veronica__Mars."_

_The blood drying on her hands was sticky and acrid. She tried once again to wipe it on her pants but it didn't come off. Somehow she thought it would never wash off.. _

"_I love you, Veronica," he blurted out instead. "I just needed you to know that."_

_Without thinking about it, she pressed her finger against the mirror, leaving a burnt red fingerprint behind. Now she had a mark there too. _

_The sound floated through the silence and she laughed at it. Laughed at herself. She didn't even know she was crying until she was sobbing. "When I get out of this," she whispered to the phone in her bra, "please don't hold this moment of weakness against me."_

_Logan was quiet again, and she ached to hear his voice, to talk of normal things like school and friends and love. But school was where Lucky had taken her and her friend was why she had let him. Love seemed too complicated for phone lines, though she'd let herself be simple for desperation's sake. _

"_I love you," she repeated, keeping her voice light. "See, now it couldn't have been the last time." His sigh came through as static, a rush of air half-laughter, half-heartbreak. "I love you, too. Even if you are crazy."_

"_I should never have kept you a secret."_

_And then the phone beeped._

"_I love you," he whispered in her ear, and then repeated it until he shook with sobs she wished she hadn't caused. She buried her head in his neck and let him be her rock again. It seemed like so long. So long._

"_Daddy?" she whispered as Logan jumped headlong into the water. Her eyes were fixed on the spot where he'd been. "Daddy!"_

"_Does that make you feel in control, Lucky?" She sighed a disgusted chuckle, staring straight back into his empty eyes. "It make you feel like a man to kick the shit out of a teenaged girl? To hold a gun and pull the trigger watch someone else bleed?" _

"_It's okay, baby. Just open your eyes."_

"_We found you, Veronica."_

_She reached an arm out, and he grasped her hand. It wasn't much, but it was enough. "I'm here, honey."_

"_You get your unsinkable ass back to Neptune and I'll believe you." _

_He smiled his little amused half-smile. "Yeah, well, let's just say we're even on favors for a while." "Ha. You can't fool me. Come on, Weevil. Embrace your inner marshmallow."_

"_Aw, honey, you're never useless." He leaned down and she placed a quick, placating kiss on his cheek. "You can always just stand there and look pretty."_

"_What the hell took you so long? I swear, the next time you get yourself kidnapped, I have dibs on your computer."_

"_He's going to kill her! What are you doing? I have to call her! I have to call someone! He's going to _kill_ her!"_

"_She's safe."_

"_You rest now, honey, okay? Everyone's safe, everything's solved, there's nothing left to worry about."_

She let the memories come and go as she began to drifted away, feeling like she was closing a book or listening to the last bars of a tragic song.

"_I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me." _

"_Epic how?" _

"_Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed . . . epic."_

"_Come on. Ruined lives, bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?" _

Halfway between asleep and awake, she smiled.

"_No one writes songs about the ones that come easy."_

_---_

_A/N: There it is. I thought that with a story dependent so much on flashbacks should end with one, and that with such a long, emotional story, you guys might like a summary. But then again, it's your opinion that counts. Love it, hate it, whatever, I want to know. _

_Anyway, thanks so much for reading. I enjoyed each and every bit of feedback, good and bad. Happy holidays, and God bless._


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